Overview

• Microplastics, tiny fragments of plastic smaller than 0.2 inches, have been found in cloud samples taken from a mountaintop in China, suggesting they might influence weather patterns.
• Microplastics can act as cloud seeds, bonding with water molecules in the air and acting as a nucleation point for clouds to form around.
• The study found that lower-altitude and denser clouds contained more microplastics, which were usually made of common polymers, including polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene and polyamide.
• Microplastics are light enough to get picked up by the wind and carried into the atmosphere, with the study suggesting that air flow from highly populated inland areas served as a major source of the microplastics.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the extent to which microplastics influence cloud formation and the potential impacts of these interactions on cloud formation and the presence of toxic metals in the atmosphere.