Group Canadian and French Researchers from the University of Laval in Quebec and the University of Clermont-Auvergne in central France have made alarming discoveries in the most unexpected place, the clouds.

killer clouds

The study took two years at the Puy-de-Dome weather station at an altitude of 1,465 meters in the Massif Central region of France. This is a kind of “junction” where air currents from different parts of the continent meet and bring with them different clouds.

The bacterial composition of the clouds turned out to be very diverse: for example, the clouds brought from the land were dominated by bacteria resistant to substances used in livestock. Scientists hypothesized this because such bacteria live on the vegetation and soil surface, from where they are picked up by the winds along with the dust. But different types of resistant bacteria were found in clouds brought from the ocean.

These bacteria usually live on the surface of vegetation, for example, on leaves or in the soil. We discovered that they are carried by the wind into the atmosphere and can travel long distances in clouds at high altitudes – all over the world.
— Florent Rossi, lead author of the study, said in an interview with AFP.

Further study of air currents will help identify the main sources of antibiotic-resistant microbes. Perhaps it will become the key to defeating dangerous bacteria that are becoming a growing problem for medicine.