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RESEARCH FRONT
Contents Vol 4(4)

Omnipresence of biological material in the atmosphere

Ruprecht Jaenicke A C , Sabine Matthias-Maser B and Sabine Gruber B
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A Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, University, 55099 Mainz, Germany.

B Former address: Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, University, 55099 Mainz, Germany.

C Corresponding author. Email: jaenicke@uni-mainz.de

Environmental Chemistry 4(4) 217-220 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN07021
Submitted: 19 February 2007  Accepted: 21 May 2007   Published: 16 August 2007

Environmental context. Atmospheric biological particles have been largely overlooked in the past. While some microorganisms have been studied, the majority of other biological particles have not. The presence of these particles might force us to view the atmospheric aerosol differently.

Abstract. Measurements of biological particles in the atmosphere during the last decade indicate that the presence of these particles seems to have been underestimated by atmospheric scientists. On the average these primary aerosol particles might be present as much as 25% of the total mass (or number for particles with radius greater than 0.2 µm) concentration of the atmospheric aerosol. Such a large fraction certainly plays a major role in all processes affected by atmospheric aerosols, such as cloud and precipitation formation, climate forcing, visibility, turbidity, and so on. This disregard of the biological particles requires a new attitude in our opinion.

Additional keywords: aerosols, atmospheric chemistry, biological particles.


Acknowledgement

Over many years this work has been supported by the German Science Foundation and the German Federal Ministry for Science and Education.


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1 The IPCC-Report of 2007 (http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html, accessed 10 May 2007), does not even mention these particles.