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Ubiquity of Biological Ice Nucleators in Snowfall
Abstract
Despite the integral role of ice nucleators (IN) in atmospheric processes leading to precipitation, their sources and distributions have not been well established. We examined IN in snowfall from mid- and high-latitude locations and found that the most active were biological in origin. Of the IN larger than 0.2 micrometer that were active at temperatures warmer than -7�C, 69 to 100% were biological, and a substantial fraction were bacteria. Our results indicate that the biosphere is a source of highly active IN and suggest that these biological particles may affect the precipitation cycle and/or their own precipitation during atmospheric transport.
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Cited by
Primary biological aerosol particles in the atmosphere: a review
Després, V. R., Huffman, J. A., Burrows, S. M., Hoose, C., Safatov, A. S., Buryak, G., Fröhlich-Nowoisky, J., Elbert, W., Andreae, M. O., Pöschl, U., et al. (2012) · Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology · doi:10.3402/tellusb.v64i0.15598 · Cited by 1,500
Hazen, R. M., Papineau, D., Bleeker, W., Downs, R. T., Ferry, J. M., McCoy, T. J., Sverjensky, D. A., & Yang, H. (2008) · American Mineralogist · doi:10.2138/am.2008.2955 · Cited by 701
Rainforest Aerosols as Biogenic Nuclei of Clouds and Precipitation in the Amazon
Pöschl, U., Martin, S. T., Sinha, B., Chen, Q., Gunthe, S. S., Huffman, J. A., Borrmann, S., Farmer, D. K., Garland, R. M., Helas, G., et al. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1191056 · Cited by 677
Diversity and ecology of psychrophilic microorganisms
Margesin, R., & Miteva, V. (2011) · Research in Microbiology · doi:10.1016/j.resmic.2010.12.004 · Cited by 518
High concentrations of biological aerosol particles and ice nuclei during and after rain
Huffman, J. A., Prenni, A. J., DeMott, P. J., Pöhlker, C., Mason, R. H., Robinson, N. H., Fröhlich-Nowoisky, J., Tobo, Y., Després, V. R., Garcia, E., et al. (2013) · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics · doi:10.5194/acp-13-6151-2013 · Cited by 468
Metadata
- Authors
- Christner, B. C., Morris, C. E., Foreman, C. M., Cai, R., & Sands, D. C.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2008-02-29
- Volume
- 319
- Issue
- 5867
- Pages
- 1214-1214
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1989272610
- Cited by
- 391
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 21.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Ubiquity of Biological Ice Nucleators in Snowfall. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1149757
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- Christner, B. C., Morris, C. E., Foreman, C. M., Cai, R., & Sands, D. C. (2008). Ubiquity of Biological Ice Nucleators in Snowfall. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1149757
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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