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Issue Date: June 22, 2008
What's up with clouds?
Cloudwatching is all good
By Jenny Rough
The many positive effects that clouds have often are overlooked.
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Gray days are the scourge of summer, synonymous with gloom and spoiled vacations.
Enter the Cloud Appreciation Society (yes, it's a real group of cloud lovers http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/). Did you know those stratus and cumulus patches floating in the Earth's atmosphere have gotten a bad rap? Well, consider this news:
Clouds combat global warming. Low-level clouds reflect the sun's heat back into space. To slow down global warming, scientists have started the Global Cooling Project. In hot areas, such as West Africa, rainwater is harvested and used to increase soil moisture so trees can be selectively planted. This, scientists hope, will encourage natural low-altitude cloud formation as the trees release water back into the atmosphere.
Clouds are alive. Life exists in the clouds -- not angelic, winged beings strumming harps, but microscopic bugs in the form of bacteria, fungi and algae. About 70 years ago, research from one of Charles Lindbergh's airplane flights first taught scientists that microbes can be airborne, hitching a ride on their fluffy friends until they rain back to land. Now scientists are discovering that these organisms grow, eat and reproduce up high. For how long? "That's a hard question," says Pierre Amato of Louisiana State University. A cloud's average life span is as long as a few hours. How long microbes stay in the atmosphere depends on their mass and aerodynamic properties.
Cloud-gazing is good for you. When the sun isn't shining, lie on your back, look upward and breathe deeply. Studies show deep breathing relieves depression and relaxes the body, says Timothy McCall, medical editor of Yoga Journal. "Attending to clouds with awareness of the breath promotes a meditative state similar to what people experience when they watch waves crash on the beach," he says. And Cloud Appreciation Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who practices meteorological meditation, says, "You can't be stressed out while gazing up and noticing King Kong holding an ice cream cone."
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