"I Really Don't Know Clouds At All . . ."

You might expect from the title of this post that Joni Mitchell has been on my mind. But, actually, I am thinking more of. . .

Julie Andrews who impressed upon us the beauty of the Austrian Alps, so inspiring as to evoke the metaphor of living music. What would Julie say about the beauty of clouds, which it turns out, truly are living? Maybe (well, but probably not) she would say something like Olivia Judson said in her blog, “The Wild Side”, on February 19, 2008.

Judson draws from a paper in Geophysical Research Letters in noting that the clouds, in spite of their frigidity, acidity and wildly fluctuating states, are full of bacteria. It’s not just that microbes have gotten swept up into unfamiliar hostile altitudes, doomed to bleak survival odds. To the contrary, it appears they are “growing, metabolizing [and] reproducing” in the uptown nimbus and cirrus neighborhoods. This, as Judson points out, raises the prospects that these microbes may well have evolved as a specific adaptation to cloud living.

It also turns out that, to some extent, it appears “microbes contribute to the formation of clouds. Clouds form when water droplets cling to particles in the air, such as dust or salt or ash — or microbes.” And, there is “tentative but mounting evidence suggests that cloud dwelling microbes may indeed biodegrade some of the compounds in the atmosphere. This could alter the composition of rain and snow; but more important, microbes could be affecting the chemical composition of the atmosphere itself.”

So, we may find that bacteria thrive in, help create and contribute to clouds.

What might we carelessly do to these fragile, angel hair ecosystems? It is certainly humbling and awe-inspiring to realize that not just the hills are alive but the very seeds of the clouds are singing with life!