Microplastics Are Infesting Clouds, Affecting Weather

They could be making rainstorms fewer and worse, too.

Cloudy Skies

Microplastics may literally be changing the weather.

In a press release, Penn State says that its environmental researchers have found evidence that microplastics may help in the formation of the ice crystals around which rain droplets form, essentially "seeding" clouds unintentionally.

Published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology: Air, this new lab-based study saw Penn State researchers place four different types of microplastics — low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — in small droplets of water, allowing them to cool slowly to see how they affected the freezing process.

The results? The droplets with microplastics in them produced ice crystals between nine and 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those without, demonstrating that rain-producing ice crystals can form at warmer temperatures with these inorganic particulates than without them.

Translation: with microplastics changing the way rain forms, they may well be changing weather patterns too.

Heavy Rain

Microplastics keep being detected everywhere scientists look, from the penises of living humans to buried archeological treasure. This new study may aid how we understand these harmful particulates, and how they seem to be so ubiquitous.

"Throughout the past two decades of research into microplastics, scientists have been finding that they're everywhere, so this is another piece of that puzzle," said Penn State chemistry professor Miriam Freedman, the senior author of the new paper.

As Freedman explains, atmospheric microplastics could both make it rain less and also make it rain heavier.

"In a polluted environment with many more aerosol particles, like microplastics, you are distributing the available water among many more aerosol particles, forming smaller droplets around each of those particles," the professor explained. "When you have more droplets, you get less rain, but because droplets only rain once they get large enough, you collect more total water in the cloud before the droplets are large enough to fall and, as a result, you get heavier rainfall when it comes."

Though this isn't the first study to posit that there are microplastics in the clouds, this study offers more evidence than ever that they may be changing the weather for the worse.

"It’s now clear that we need to have a better understanding of how they're interacting with our climate system," Freedman said, "because we’ve been able to show that the process of cloud formation can be triggered by microplastics."

More on microplastics: Microplastics Likely Causing Wave of Cancer in Young People