This is a scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

The southern ocean which surrounds the Antarctica is the cloudiest place on Earth. It's relatively free of humans and the dust, pollen,

and spores that float off more temperate lands don't make it that far south, making

the southern ocean an ideal lab to study the natural formation of clouds.

You know, if you want to hear someone talking, it's easier to hear them in a quiet room than

in a room where a lot of other people are talking as well.

Susanna Burrows is an atmospheric scientist at Pacific Northwest National Lab in Washington.

The isolated signal Burrows and her colleagues wanted to hear was how particles from floating phytoplankton

influence cloud droplet formation.

They use computer models to simulate the stuff that seeds clouds

over the southern ocean.

Particles like sea salt, organic bits from phytoplankton, kicked up by the sea spray, and sulfates

from the gases the critters emit. They compared those particulate simulations to actual satellite

measurements of clouds.

And they found that during the southern summer, when plankton bloom, the phytoplankton may actually

double cloud droplet formation.

That in turn increases the reflectivity of the clouds, meaning more sunlight

bounces back into space during the brighter summer months. Almost like the

Southern Ocean slips on a pair of sunglasses, just when it gets too bright?

That's an interesting analogy. It's less like, yeah, so it's less like

sunglasses and more like...

We later agreed.

...