Life in the clouds: Over 3,000 compounds and seven species of bacteria found in HAILSTONES (so it's probably not a good idea to eat snow)



Researchers say clouds are teeming with life - and that bacteria could actually trigger rain and hailstorms



Findings could have major implications for weather forecasting

At first glance they may look like they have fallen from the sky in a clean and perfect form - but hailstones and clouds are actually filled with bacteria and over 3,000 chemical compounds, scientists revealed today.

The Danish researchers analyzed hailstones recovered after a storm in May 2009 and found that they carried several species of bacteria typically found on plants and almost 3000 different compounds usually found in soil.

The team say their finding could have major implications for our understanding of weather patterns, and that certain bacteria may even trigger hailstorms.

Researchers analysing hailstones found seven species of bacteria and almost 3000 different compounds usually found in soil.

However, the researchers say the hailstones had very few soil-associated bacteria or chemicals that would usually occur in plants.

Three of the bacterial species discovered were found in most of the hailstones studied, and may represent 'typical' cloud inhabitants, the study in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Tina Šantl Temkiv and colleagues from Aarhus University, Denmark found .

According to the authors, the findings may help understand how clouds work

'When we started these analyses, we were hoping to arrive at a merely descriptive characterization of the bacterial community in an unexplored habitat,' said said Ulrich Gosewinkel Karlson, leader of the aeromicrobiology research group at Aarhus University.

'But what we found was indirect evidence for life processes in the atmosphere, such as bacterial selection and growth,'



Some of the bacterial species can seed the tiny ice crystals that lead to rain, suggesting they play a role in causing rain, the researchers believe.

A hail covered road in Kansas: Researchers now say that hail and clouds have a complex ecosystem with several types of bacteria, some of which could even help trigger rains

'They're sucking huge amounts of air from under the clouds, that's how the bacteria probably got into the cloud,' said Tina Santl Temkiv, an environmental chemist at Aarhus University in Denmark.

In the past, researchers have found bacterial life in clouds that drift over mountaintops.



Bacteria have been found as far up as 24.8 miles and may even survive as spores into space, Temkiv said.

The team studied 42 hailstones that had formed in a thunderstorm over Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2009.

After carefully removing the outer layer and sterilizing the hailstone, they analyzed its chemical composition.

Some of bacteria found are ice-nucleators, meaning they can act as seeds for ice crystals to attach to in the clouds above Earth.



When these same ice crystals get large enough, they fall as rain or snow, depending on the air temperature.





