Distinct Change of Supercooled Liquid Cloud Properties by Aerosols From an Aircraft‐Based Seeding Experiment

Abstract

Cloud plays essential roles to Earth's energy balance and hydrological cycle. Its characteristics could be modified by human activities through cloud seeding. However, there is long‐lasting debate whether the cloud seeding can modify the clouds to introduce or change precipitation effectively, due to the challenge that the effect of cloud seeding is difficult to be evaluated. Using the data from a cloud seeding experiment, this study investigates the differences of cloud properties between before and after the cloud seeding for a supercooled liquid cloud. It shows that before the cloud seeding, the clouds are supercooled liquid phase clouds. After cloud seeding, the observations from both the cloud particle images and cloud particle size distributions indicate the occurrence of large ice crystal particles and the broadening of particle size distribution. Thus, much larger and much more ice crystal particles occurred after the cloud seeding, which could further grow into precipitation particles through collision‐coalescence process. Satellite image further shows the formation of precipitation clearly after the cloud seeding experiment. This study suggests that cloud seeding can work efficiently for supercooled liquid clouds.

Dispersion of Droplet Size Distributions in Supercooled Non‐precipitating Stratocumulus from Aircraft Observations Obtained during the Southern Ocean Cloud Radiation Aerosol Transport Experimental Study

“…The dependence of cloud microphysical properties on environmental conditions can be investigated using optical probes capable of measuring DSDs (e.g., Burnet & Brenguier, 2007; Dong et al., 2020; McFarquhar, Zhang, et al., 2007; Y. Yang et al., 2019; Zhao et al., 2019) installed on aircraft. Using such in situ data, ε , r e , and LWC can be derived from the DSDs (Heymsfield & McFarquhar, 2001; Martin et al., 1994; Stephens & Platt, 1987; Zhao et al., 2012).…”

“…The dependence of cloud microphysical properties on environmental conditions can be investigated using optical probes capable of measuring DSDs (e.g., Burnet & Brenguier, 2007;Dong et al, 2020;Mc-Farquhar, Zhang, et al, 2007;Y. Yang et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019) installed on aircraft.…”

Regional characteristics and exploitation potential of atmospheric water resources in China

“…Considering the exploitation and utilization, there are much higher economic and technical costs to condense water vapour into water by direct cooling or uplift expansion cooling. However, hydrometeors can be caused to fall down to the ground to increase ground water resources by an exploitation technology with relatively lower cost (French et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019;Dong et al, 2020). Dong et al (2021) showed robust evidences of conversion from liquid droplets to ice particles and increasing precipitation by cloud seeding.…”

Assessing the Effect of Riming on Snow Microphysics: The First Observational Study in East China

“…Radar-based remote sensing provides indirect information about the characteristics of snow (Grazioli et al, 2015), and a certain canting angle assumption used in Li et al (2018) needs further evaluation. In situ instruments are useful and often necessary to better characterize clouds (Dong et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019) and precipitation (Grazioli et al, 2015;Matrosov et al, 2017). A 2-D video disdrometer (2DVD) can measure the particle shape and fall velocity near the surface (Huang et al, 2015;Kruger & Krajewski, 2002), which can be used to analyze the influence of riming on the properties of snowflakes directly.…”