Climate scientists are turning their attention to Mount Helmos, an isolated alpine area in Greece. This space is important for understanding extreme weather, particularly increasing heavy rainfall. Greece’s Mount Helmos towers over the region to a dramatic 2,350-meter peak. Its geologically and climatically stable constant cloud cover year-round provides an ideal setting for scientific exploration. Kunfeng Gao and Athanasios Nenes are researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They investigate the role that biological emissions from the surrounding alpine forest have on cloud nucleation processes.
The alpine forest beneath Mount Helmos is a major source for diverse biological particles, including pollen, bacteria, fungal spores, and plant material. These emissions are at their highest around midday and reduce drastically at night. Having sent 6 million biological particles into the sky, the study’s findings suggest that these biological particles alter cloud dynamics and precipitation patterns in the region.
Research Background
Kunfeng Gao, a postdoctoral researcher collaborating with Athanasios Nenes from EPFL’s Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and Their Impacts, has been instrumental in this research initiative. The study involved collecting air samples to analyze their biological content, aiming to understand ice nucleating particle diurnal variability in Eastern Mediterranean clouds.
“The increased biological particles may contribute to cloud formation that can make them precipitate,” said Gao. This finding is further evidence that biological emissions can affect local meteorology. Beyond their local importance, they are key to larger climatic patterns.
The present investigation, supported by the extensive initial studies and ongoing fieldwork in comparison develop mainly from these earlier efforts, specifically being the CHOPIN campaign guided by Nenes. It uses cutting-edge instrumentation to classify airborne biological particles. We view this campaign as a great leap forward in disentangling the tricky dance that biological emissions do with weather systems.
Biological Particles and Weather
This study demonstrates just how important biological particles can be in the process of forming cloud droplets. These particles are essential for ice crystal formation in clouds. According to Nenes, “Biological particles are very effective at forming ice in clouds, and the formation of ice is responsible for most of the precipitation the planet receives worldwide, because ice falls very quickly from the sky. Intense ice formation is associated with extreme weather.”
This finding emphasizes the fact that biological emissions do not stop at local boundaries. They can have huge effects on weather patterns across the entire globe. The research team has established a clear connection between the biological activity in the alpine forest and increased precipitation events in nearby areas.
The loading of biological constituents varies by time of day, with significant peaks occurring during the daytime hours. This high diurnal variability is a strong indicator of the effect that natural cycles have on weather patterns. In addition, the data accumulated on Mount Helmos has a promising potential. It would do much to improve scientists’ capacity to forecast extreme weather instances, particularly those manifested as torrential rains and blizzards.
Future Implications
“Moving forward together, Nenes and Moore want to see greater collaboration across this burgeoning research field. “We and the CleanCloud consortium as a whole will be working with the European Space Agency and our sister consortia CERTAINTY and AIRSENSE to help make the best use of the recently launched EarthCare satellite with the ultimate goal of understanding the role of aerosols on clouds and precipitation in a post-fossil world,” he stated.
Coupled satellite technology and ground-based studies can be a powerful combination to uncover the processes involved in cloud formation. In doing so, this approach will allow us to better gauge their climatic effects. Our researchers are already hard at work collecting data from Mount Helmos and other important points. …and help improve the field towards making models that truthfully represent the interactions of these biological emissions with dynamic weather systems.
