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Climate Change 2016
October 27-29, 2016
Volume 7, Issue 9(Suppl) J Earth Sci Clim Change
ISSN: 2157-7617 JESCC, an open access journal
conferenceseries .com
October 24-26, 2016 Valencia, Spain
World Conference onClimate Change
Biological ice-nucleating macromolecules in the atmosphere
Bernhard G Pummer
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany
The freezing of liquid water at temperatures below 273.15 K is thermodynamically favorable, but kinetically impeded.
Freezing at temperatures higher than around 235 K only occurs when catalytic impurities that support the proper
arrangement of water molecules are present. These so-called ice nucleators can be of various origins, ranging from silicate
crystals to soot particles to biological macromolecules. In the atmosphere, these particles massively contribute to cloud
glaciation, and therefore influence albedo and precipitation. Some organisms among bacteria, fungi, animals, and plants are
capable of producing biological ice-nucleating macromolecules (bioINMs), which are proteins or saccharides. Individual
bioINMs are much smaller than other ice nucleators (down to a few nanometers), and can catalyze freezing at far higher
temperatures (up to the thermodynamic freezing point). As most bioINMs are easily extracted from their host cell when in
contact with water, they can distribute in soil, water, and air independently, respectively attached on other particles. Since it
was believed for a long time that only insoluble micro-sized particles have the potential to nucleate ice, these bioINMs have
been widely ignored, and have not been adequately taken into account in atmospheric model calculations. This becomes more
urgent, since the anthropogenic influence on landscapes, water bodies, and the atmosphere also influence the formation and
distribution of bioINMs.
Biography
Bernhard G Pummer has completed his PhD at Vienna University of Technology in 2013 and is currently a Post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for
Chemistry. He is the lead author of 3 peer-reviewed journal articles.
Bernhard G Pummer, J Earth Sci Clim Change 2016, 7:9(Suppl)