CONTACT: Jim Sliwa WASHINGTON, DC – February 14, 2012 -- The
models used to understand how Earth’s climate works include
thousands of different variables from many scientific including
atmospherics, oceanography, seismology, geology, physics and
chemistry, but few take into consideration the vast effect that
microbes have on climate. Now, a new report from the American
Academy of Microbiology, “Incorporating Microbial Processes into
Climate Models”, offers a plan for integrating the latest
understanding of the science of microbiology into climate
models. “Climate scientists and microbiologists usually work in
isolation from each other, and yet their work is intimately
connected. Microbes are critical players in every geochemical
cycle relevant to climate. The sum total of microbial activity
is enormous, but the net effect of microbes on climate-relevant
gases is currently not known,” says Edward DeLong of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-chaired the report
with Caroline Harwood of the Univers