POTENTIAL ICE CRYSTAL MARKS FROM PENNSYLVANIAN–PERMIAN EQUATORIAL RED-BEDS OF NORTHWEST COLORADO, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT The Pennsylvanian–Permian Maroon Formation of northwest Colorado is an up to 4,600 m thick succession of mainly siliciclastic continental red-beds deposited in equatorial intermontane basins of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. Sedimentary surfaces of fluvio-lacustrine to eolian siltstones and fine-grained sandstones from various stratigraphic levels within the Maroon Formation preserve cm-sized straight to gently curved sediment-filled acicular structures referred to five morphological groups: single, branched, stellate, rosette, and bunched. Depositional environment, shape, and size of the structures are most similar to ice crystal marks that result from freezing of water-saturated fine-grained substrate at the sediment-air interface. They differ from other syngenetically produced crystals and crystal pseudomorphs in sedimentary rocks mainly by crystal shape and environmental conditions. The potential ice crystal marks of the Maroon Formation are notable for the fidelity and morphological diversity of the crystal casts and could be a key for the understanding of similar but hitherto often only called enigmatic structures of the sedimentary rock record. The ice crystal mark occurrences in the Maroon Formation suggest that night frost affected lower elevation equatorial areas during the climax of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age and may stimulate research on evolutionary adaptations of early terrestrial biota to overcome significant air temperature fluctuations.

The effects of vitrification on oocyte quality

Vitrification, is an ultra-rapid, manual cooling process that produces glass-like (ice crystal free) solidification. Water is prevented from forming intercellular and intracellular ice crystals during cooling as a result of oocyte dehydration and the use of highly concentrated cryoprotectant. Though oocytes can be cryopreserved without ice crystal formation through vitrification, it is still not clear whether the process of vitrification causes any negative impact (temperature change/chilling effect, osmotic stress, cryoprotectant toxicity, and/or phase transitions) on oocyte quality that translate to diminished embryo developmental potential or subsequent clinical outcomes. In this review, we attempt to assess the technique’s potential effects and the consequence of these effects on outcomes.

Ice microphysics of low-level ice clouds in the Arctic: Satellite analysis

<p>This study investigates low-level ice clouds in the Arctic and their potential relation to the surface aerosols. These aerosols or ice nucleating particles (INPs), are necessary for the heterogeneous nucleation of ice in temperatures above -38°C. Several studies in the past have investigated the sources of INPs and their nucleating behavior with response to the temperature. According to these studies, it has been suggested that a marine source of INPs coming from sea spray is able to nucleate ice in temperatures close to -5<sup>o</sup>C. What we do here is a large-scale comparison of boundary-layer ice clouds over open ocean and sea ice, over the whole Arctic region for the time period of 2006-2016. We use for this purpose a satellite-retrieved quantity, the ice crystal number concentration (N<sub>i</sub>), which we investigate in relation to the temperature. We study clouds with regard to the region and season they form and we examine their coupling to the surface. Our findings show - contrary to previous expectation - enhanced ice crystal numbers over sea ice compared to open ocean, in temperatures above -10<sup>o</sup>C. In lower temperatures this difference still persists for the lower Arctic latitudes (<70<sup>o</sup>N), especially for clouds that are coupled to the surface.</p>

Aviation impact on the cirrus ice crystal number using satellite observation

<p align="justify">Aviation outflow is the only anthropogenic source of pollution that is directly emitted into the upper troposphere. This emission has the potential to modify the cloudiness directly by forming linear contrails and indirectly by injecting aerosols, which can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nucleating particles (INP). Contrail cirrus can persist either in cloud-free supersaturated air, increasing high-cloud cover or inside natural cirrus cloud, and therefore modifying the microphysical properties of already existing cirrus clouds. Even though the situation that an aircraft flies through a natural cirrus is one of the highly probable situations in the upper troposphere, its subsequent impact is unclear with the present state of knowledge. Quantifying such impact is necessary if we are to properly account for the influence of aviation on climate. One main limitation preventing us to better identify these impacts is the lack of height resolved measurements inside the cirrus clouds.</p> <p align="justify">In this study, we used new retrievals from combined satellite cloud radar and lidar (Cloud- Sat/CALIPSO; DARDAR-Nice algorithm), which provide height resolved information of ice crystal number concentration, at intercepts between the CALIPSO ground track and the position of civil aircraft operating between the west coast of the continental United States (Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles) and Hawaii during 2010 and 2011 from an earlier study.</p> <p align="justify">Comparing cloudy air behind the aircraft inside the flight track to the adjacent regions and to ahead of the aircraft revealed a notable difference in ice number concentration at 300 m to 540 m beneath the flight height. These differences are derived from the reduction of ice number concentrations as we proceed toward the cloud base in regions unaffected by aviation and the increase of ice crystals as we distance a few hundreds of meters beneath the flight level in the regions affected by aviation.</p>

Hydrometeor Classification of Winter Precipitation in Northern China Based on Multi-Platform Radar Observation System

Hydrometeor classification remains a challenge in winter precipitation cloud systems. To address this issue, 42 snowfall events were investigated based on a multi-platform radar observation system (i.e., X-band dual-polarization radar, Ka-band millimeter wave cloud radar, microwave radiometer, airborne equipment, etc.) in the mountainous region of northern China from 2016 to 2020. A fuzzy logic classification method is proposed to identify the particle phases, and the retrieval result was further verified with ground-based radar observation. Moreover, the hydrometeor characteristics were compared with the numerical simulations to clarify the reliability of the proposed hydrometeor classification approach. The results demonstrate that the X-/Ka- band radars are capable of identifying hydrometeor phases in winter precipitation in accordance with both ground observations and numerical simulations. Three particle categories, including snow, graupel and the mixture of snow and graupel are also detected in the winter precipitation cloud system, and there are three vertical layers identified from top to bottom, including the ice crystal layer, snow-graupel mixed layer and snowflake layer. Overall, this study has the potential for improving the understanding of microphysical processes such as freezing, deposition and aggregation of ice crystal particles in the winter precipitation cloud system.

Fluorescence lidar observations of wildfire smoke inside cirrus: A contribution to smoke-cirrus – interaction research

A remote sensing method, based on fluorescence lidar measurements, that allows to detect and to quantify the smoke content in upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) is presented. The unique point of this approach is that, smoke and cirrus properties are observed in the same air volume simultaneously. In the article, we provide results of fluorescence and multiwavelength Mie-Raman lidar measurements performed at ATOLL observatory from Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, University of Lille, during strong smoke episodes in the summer and autumn seasons of 2020. The aerosol fluorescence was induced by 355 nm laser radiation and the fluorescence backscattering was measured in a single spectral channel, centered at 466 nm of 44 nm width. To estimate smoke properties, such as number, surface area and volume concentration, the conversion factors, which link the fluorescence backscattering and the smoke microphysical properties, are derived from the synergy of multiwavelength Mie-Raman and fluorescence lidar observations. Based on two case studies, we demonstrate that the fluorescence lidar technique provides possibility to estimate the smoke surface area concentration within freshly formed cirrus layers. This value was used in smoke INP parameterization scheme to predict ice crystal number concentrations in cirrus generation cells.