The Effects of Surface Kinetics on Crystal Growth and Homogeneous Freezing in Parcel Simulations of Cirrus

2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (8) ◽  
pp. 2929-2946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengzhu Zhang ◽  
Jerry Y. Harrington

Abstract The uptake of water vapor excess by ice crystals is a key process regulating the supersaturation in cold clouds. Both the ice crystal number concentration and depositional growth rate control the vapor uptake rate and are sensitive to the deposition coefficient . The deposition coefficient depends on temperature and supersaturation; however, cloud models either ignore or assume a constant . In this study, the effects of on crystal growth and homogeneous freezing of haze solution drops in simulated cirrus are examined. A Lagrangian parcel model is used with a new ice growth model that predicts the deposition coefficients along two crystal growth axes. Parcel model results indicate that predicting can be critical for predicting ice nucleation and supersaturation at different stages of cloud development. At cloud base, model results show that surface kinetics constrain the homogeneous freezing rate primarily through the growth impact of small particle sizes in comparison to the mean free path. The deposition coefficient has little effect on homogeneous freezing rates, because the high cloud-base supersaturation produces near unity. Above the cloud-base nucleation zone, decreasing supersaturation causes to decrease to values as low as 0.001. These low values of lead to higher steady-state supersaturation. Also, the low values of produce substantial impacts on particle shape evolution and particle size, both of which are dependent on updraft strength.

Author(s):  
Jerry Y. Harrington ◽  
G. Alexander Sokolowsky ◽  
Hugh Morrison

AbstractNumerical cloud models require estimates of the vapor growth rate for ice crystals. Current bulk and bin microphysical parameterizations generally assume that vapor growth is diffusion limited, though some parameterizations include the influence of surface attachment kinetics through a constant deposition coefficient. A parameterization for variable deposition coefficients is provided herein. The parameterization is an explicit function of the ambient ice supersaturation and temperature, and an implicit function of crystal dimensions and pressure. The parameterization is valid for variable surface types including growth by dislocations and growth by step nucleation. Deposition coefficients are predicted for the two primary growth directions of crystals, allowing for the evolution of the primary habits. Comparisons with benchmark calculations of instantaneous mass growth indicate that the parameterization is accurate to within a relative error of 1%. Parcel model simulations using Lagrangian microphysics as a benchmark indicate that the bulk parameterization captures the evolution of mass mixing ratio and fall speed with typical relative errors of less than 10%, whereas the average axis lengths can have errors of up to 20%. The bin model produces greater accuracy with relative errors often less that 10%. The deposition coefficient parameterization can be used in any bulk and bin scheme, with low error, if an equivalent volume spherical radius is provided.


CrystEngComm ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (16) ◽  
pp. 2163-2167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Z. Kong ◽  
Ivanhoe K. H. Leung ◽  
Vijayalekshmi Sarojini

Synthetic antifreeze peptides based on the hyperactive antifreeze protein modify the shape of ice crystals and show enhanced antifreeze activity with the addition of a small molecule.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 5449-5474 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wang ◽  
J. E. Penner

Abstract. A statistical cirrus cloud scheme that accounts for mesoscale temperature perturbations is implemented in a coupled aerosol and atmospheric circulation model to better represent both subgrid-scale supersaturation and cloud formation. This new scheme treats the effects of aerosol on cloud formation and ice freezing in an improved manner, and both homogeneous freezing and heterogeneous freezing are included. The scheme is able to better simulate the observed probability distribution of relative humidity compared to the scheme that was implemented in an older version of the model. Heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN) are shown to decrease the frequency of occurrence of supersaturation, and improve the comparison with observations at 192 hPa. Homogeneous freezing alone can not reproduce observed ice crystal number concentrations at low temperatures (<205 K), but the addition of heterogeneous IN improves the comparison somewhat. Increases in heterogeneous IN affect both high level cirrus clouds and low level liquid clouds. Increases in cirrus clouds lead to a more cloudy and moist lower troposphere with less precipitation, effects which we associate with the decreased convective activity. The change in the net cloud forcing is not very sensitive to the change in ice crystal concentrations, but the change in the net radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere is still large because of changes in water vapor. Changes in the magnitude of the assumed mesoscale temperature perturbations by 25% alter the ice crystal number concentrations and the net radiative fluxes by an amount that is comparable to that from a factor of 10 change in the heterogeneous IN number concentrations. Further improvements on the representation of mesoscale temperature perturbations, heterogeneous IN and the competition between homogeneous freezing and heterogeneous freezing are needed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Kärcher ◽  
Claudia Marcolli

Abstract. The homogeneous nucleation of ice in supercooled liquid water clouds is characterized by time-dependent freezing rates. By contrast, water phase transitions induced heterogeneously by ice nucleating particles (INPs) are described by time-independent ice-active fractions depending on ice supersaturation (s). Laboratory studies report ice-active particle number fractions (AFs) that are cumulative in s. Cloud models budget INP and ice crystal numbers to conserve total particle number during water phase transitions. Here, we show that ice formation from INPs with time-independent nucleation behavior is overpredicted when models budget particle numbers and at the same time derive ice crystal numbers from s-cumulative AFs. This causes a bias towards heterogeneous ice formation in situations where INPs compete with homogeneous droplet freezing during cloud formation. We resolve this issue by introducing differential AFs, moving us one step closer to more robust simulations of aerosol-cloud interactions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinzi Deng ◽  
Elana Apfelbaum ◽  
Ran Drori

<p>Since some antifreeze proteins and glycoproteins (AF(G)Ps) cannot directly bind to all crystal planes, they change ice crystal morphology by minimizing the area of the crystal planes to which they cannot bind until crystal growth is halted. Previous studies found that growth along the <i>c</i>-axis (perpendicular to the basal plane, the crystal plane to which these AF(G)Ps cannot bind) is accelerated by some AF(G)Ps, while growth of other planes is inhibited. The effects of this growth acceleration on crystal morphology and on the thermal hysteresis activity are unknown to date. Understanding these effects will elucidate the mechanism of ice growth inhibition by AF(G)Ps. Using cold stages and an Infrared laser, ice growth velocities and crystal morphologies in AF(G)P solutions were measured. Three types of effects on growth velocity were found: concentration-dependent acceleration, concentration-independent acceleration, and concentration-dependent deceleration. Quantitative crystal morphology measurements in AF(G)P solutions demonstrated that adsorption rate of the proteins to ice plays a major role in determining the morphology of the bipyramidal crystal. These results demonstrate that faster adsorption rates generate bipyramidal crystals with diminished basal surfaces at higher temperatures compared to slower adsorption rates. The acceleration of growth along the <i>c</i>-axis generates crystals with smaller basal surfaces at higher temperatures leading to increased growth inhibition of the entire crystal.<a></a></p>


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