Search results for "crystals"

2020

Abstract. This study presents airborne in situ and satellite remote sensing climatologies of cirrus clouds and humidity. The climatologies serve as a guide to the properties of cirrus clouds, with the new in situ database providing detailed insights into boreal midlatitudes and the tropics, while the satellite-borne data set offers a global overview. To this end, an extensive, quality-checked data archive, the Cirrus Guide II in situ database, is created from airborne in situ measurements during 150 flights in 24 campaigns. The archive contains meteorological parameters, ice water content (IWC), ice crystal number concentration (Nice), ice crystal mean mass radius (Rice), relative humidity …

Vertical redistribution of moisture and aerosol in orographic mixed-phase clouds

2020

Orographic wave clouds offer a natural laboratory to investigate cloud microphysical processes and their representation in atmospheric models. Wave clouds impact the larger-scale flow by the vertical redistribution of moisture and aerosol. Here we use detailed cloud microphysical observations from the Ice in Clouds Experiment – Layer Clouds (ICE-L) campaign to evaluate the recently developed Cloud Aerosol Interacting Microphysics (CASIM) module in the Met Office Unified Model (UM) with a particular focus on different parameterizations for heterogeneous freezing. Modelled and observed thermodynamic and microphysical properties agree very well (deviation of air temperature <1 K; spe…

2016

We present detailed airborne in situ measurements of cloud microphysics in two midlatitude cirrus clouds, collected as part of the Cirrus Coupled Cloud-Radiation Experiment (CIRCCREX). A new habit recognition algorithm for sorting cloud particle images using a neural network is introduced. Both flights observed clouds that were related to frontal systems, but one was actively developing whilst the other dissipated as it was sampled. The two clouds showed distinct differences in particle number, habit and size. However a number of common features were observed in the 2DS dataset, including a distinct bimodal size distribution within the higher temperature regions of the clouds. This may resu…

The evolution of microphysical and optical properties of an A380 contrail in the vortex phase

2012

A contrail from a large-body A380 aircraft at cruise in the humid upper troposphere has been probed with in-situ instruments onboard the DLR research aircraft Falcon. The contrail was sampled during 700 s measurement time at contrail ages of about 1–4 min. The contrail was in the vortex regime during which the primary wake vortices were sinking 270 m below the A380 flight level while the secondary wake remained above. Contrail properties were sampled separately in the primary wake at 90 and 115 s contrail age and nearly continously in the secondary wake at contrail ages from 70 s to 220 s. The scattering phase functions of the contrail particles were measured with a polar nephelometer. The …

In-situ observations and modeling of small nitric acid-containing ice crystals

2007

Measurements in nascent ice forming regions are very rare and help understand cirrus cloud formation and the interactions of trace gases with ice crystals. A tenuous cirrus cloud has been probed with in-situ and remote sensing instruments onboard the high altitude research aircraft Geophysica M55 in the tropical upper troposphere. Besides microphysical and optical particle properties, water (H<sub>2</sub>O) and reactive nitrogen species (NO<sub>y</sub>) have been measured. In slightly ice supersaturated air between 14.2 and 14.9 km altitude, an unusually low ice water content of 0.031 mg m<sup>−3</sup> and small ice crystals with mean radii of 5…

A comprehensive laboratory study on the immersion freezing behavior of illite NX particles: a comparison of 17 ice nucleation measurement techniques

2015

Immersion freezing is the most relevant heterogeneous ice nucleation mechanism through which ice crystals are formed in mixed-phase clouds. In recent years, an increasing number of laboratory experiments utilizing a variety of instruments have examined immersion freezing activity of atmospherically relevant ice-nucleating particles. However, an intercomparison of these laboratory results is a difficult task because investigators have used different ice nucleation (IN) measurement methods to produce these results. A remaining challenge is to explore the sensitivity and accuracy of these techniques and to understand how the IN results are potentially influenced or biased by experimental param…

Microphysical and optical properties of Arctic mixed-phase clouds. The 9 April 2007 case study.

2009

Abstract. Airborne measurements in Arctic boundary-layer stratocumulus were carried out near Spitsbergen on 9 April 2007 during the Arctic Study of Tropospheric Aerosol, Clouds and Radiation (ASTAR) campaign. A unique set of co-located observations is used to describe the cloud properties, including detailed in situ cloud microphysical and radiation measurements along with airborne and co-located spaceborne remote sensing data (Lidar on Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations [CALIPSO] and radar on CloudSat satellites). The CALIPSO profiles evidence a cloud top temperature which varies between −24°C and −21°C. The in situ cloud observations reveal that the attenua…

In-line holography of cloud volumes applied to the measurement of raindrops and snowflakes

1998

Abstract The ground-based HODAR (HOlographic Droplet and Aerosol Recording) of the University of Mainz has been operational since 1989 on the Kleiner Feldberg Mountain Observatory near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, in a `small volume' configuration. With this setup an air volume of approximately 1 l can be in situ recorded, which allows it to image all aerosol particles and droplets with diameter larger than 6 μm contained in the sample volume in situ. Recently the beam diameter and optical path length of the inline system have been enlarged such that large cloud volumes (approximately 500 l) can be recorded on single holograms. During the holographic image reconstruction step in the laboratory,…

2020

Abstract. An ice cloud chamber was developed at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz for generating several thousand data points for mass and sedimentation velocity measurements of ice crystals with sizes less than 150 µm. Ice nucleation was initiated from a cloud of supercooled droplets by local cooling using a liquid nitrogen cold finger. Three-dimensional tracks of ice crystals falling through the slightly supersaturated environment were obtained from the reconstruction of sequential holographic images, automated detection of the crystals in the hologram reconstructions, and particle tracking. Through collection of the crystals and investigation under a microscope before and after …

Ice supersaturations and cirrus cloud crystal numbers

2009

Upper tropospheric observations outside and inside of cirrus clouds indicate water vapour mixing ratios sometimes exceeding water saturation. Relative humidities over ice (RHice) of up to and more than 200% have been reported from aircraft and balloon measurements in recent years. From these observations a lively discussion continues on whether there is a lack of understanding of ice cloud microphysics or whether the water measurements are tainted with large uncertainties or flaws. Here, RHice in clear air and in ice clouds is investigated. Strict quality-checked aircraft in situ observations of RHice were performed during 28 flights in tropical, mid-latitude and Arctic field experiments in…