Identification

Title

Accelerated impact of airborne glaciogenic seeding of stratiform clouds by turbulence

Abstract

Several recent studies have reported complete cloud glaciation induced by airborne-based glaciogenic cloud seeding over plains. Since turbulence is an important factor controlling mixed-phase clouds, including ice initiation, snow growth, and cloud longevity, it is hypothesized that turbulence may have an impact on the seeding effect. To understand the role of turbulence in seeded clouds, idealized Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) large eddy simulations over flat terrain were conducted for a shallow stratiform cloud in which complete glaciation was observed. The results show that the model can reasonably capture the magnitude and spatial distributions of radar echoes in seeded areas. Sensitivity tests suggest that, for this case, stronger turbulence enhanced the particle dispersion, the nucleation of silver iodide (AgI) particles, and the growth of ice crystals, which accelerated cloud glaciation, even though the condensation of droplets was also enhanced. The faster cloud glaciation intensified precipitation within a short time after seeding, while the liquid water was quickly consumed, leading to a decrease in precipitation rate in the further downwind areas. Such a transition from positive to negative seeding effect is more pronounced for seeding with a higher AgI release rate. This study provides strong evidence that turbulence plays a vital role in the physical chain of events associated with cloud seeding.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7vm4hq7

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-07-18T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact