Preliminary study of Microbiology in Clouds at Whiteface Mountain in New York

Whiteface Mountain (WFM) in northern NY State is the site of a historic mountaintop atmospheric observatory with an ongoing cloud water chemistry monitoring program that has been operating every summer (June through September) since 1994. Though long-term chemical analysis has been conducted, no analysis on the microbiome has been completed at WFM. Over the years, a new chemical regime has been reported in the cloudwater with missing analytes. Knowing how microbes can interact with chemicals, we hypothesize microbes are partially responsible for this shift and are crucial in understanding the chemical background of clouds.

To start this study, cloudwater filters have been analyzed both chemically and microbially. Chemically, weighted averages have been calculated for each cloudwater filter based on the chemical composition of the clouds. Microbially, we have begun DNA extractions and subsequent metagenomic analysis using the Oxford Nanopore MinION using a select number of cloud water filters from 2024. Overall, this study aims to build upon microbial work accomplished by the Puy de Dôme groups and discuss the collection, storage, and analysis of cloudwater filters to connect the chemical to the microbial at WFM.