Outline for Lecture 10

How Precipitation Forms

Forms of Precipitation
Precipitation Measurements
Intentional Weather Modification
Inadvertent Weather Modification
3/04/03

standard atmosphere 300mb 30,000 ft

standard atmosphere 500mb 18,000 ft

standard atmosphere 700mb 10,000 ft

standard atmosphere 850mb 5,000 ft

How Precipitation Forms

Important Facts:
-cloud droplets are tiny
(20 micrometers).
-many condensation
nuclei are present.
-tiny particles fall more
slowly than large ones.
-a cloud droplets
diameter must grow
~200 times to reach
a raindrops diameter.
-to attain the volume of
a rain droplet, the cloud
droplet increases a
million times in volume.

Precipitation Formation Mechanisms

The Bergeron Process (Cold Clouds)
The Collision-Coalescence Process (Warm Clouds)

The Bergeron process describes how rain or snow forms when the
cloud temperature is below freezing.
Temperature

RH wrt* H2O(liq)

RH wrt H2O(ice)

0C

100%

100%

-05C

100%

105%

-10C

100%

110%

-15C

100%

115%

-20C

100%

121%

*wrt = with respect to

This process where ice crystals grow at the expense of cloud droplets is
called the Ice Crystal Process. It is also named after the Norwegian
researcher who discovered it (Tor Bergeron, there were others).

Three important properties of water droplets:

1. Cloud droplets do not freeze at 0.C
2. Supercooled (water in the liquid state below 0C)
water droplets will freeze immediately if
agitated sufficiently or when they come in contact with
freezing nuclei (a crystalline structure similar to ice)
3. The saturation vapor pressure with respect to ice is
lower than the saturation vapor pressure with respect
to liquid water.

Saturation with Respect to Ice and Water

Liquid Water

Ice

Vapor pressure is the pressure due to water vapor molecules when the
evaporation rate is equal to the condensation rate.
Because of the crystalline structure of ice, water molecules are not able to break
free from an ice surface as easily than from a water surface.
Therefore, the saturation vapor pressure with respect to an ice surface would be
less than the saturation vapor pressure with respect to a liquid water surface at a
given temperature.

Growth Process by Bergeron Process

Coexistence of supercooled water droplets and ice crystals is
essential to precipitation process in the Mid latitudes.

20,000 ft

-40C

Ice crystals

top

7,000 ft

-20C

middle

3,000 ft

-10C

Supercooled water
droplets and ice crystals

1,000 ft

-10C

Water Droplets

lower

Terminal Velocity occurs when: F = 0

(when Fgravity = Ffriction )
Gravitational Force

mass gravity

4/3 r3 g

/3 g r

Frictional Force

area velocity
r2 v
v

(velocity is a function of r)

Fall Velocity for Cloud droplets as a function of size

Fall Velocity (km/hr)

35
30
25
20
15
10
5

From: Table 5-2

0
0

Diameter of Cloud droplets (millimeter)

Maximum Fall Distance Before Evaporation

1.0E+06

max fall distance (m)

1.0E+04
1.0E+02
1.0E+00
1.0E-02
1.0E-04

From Table 5-A

1.0E-06

500

1000

1500
drop diamter (um)

2000

2500

3000

The Process from Warm Clouds:

The Collision-Coalescence Process
As droplets fall they collide with
smaller droplets and coalesce.
after collecting ~1 million cloud
droplets the particle is large enough
to fall without evaporating.
Because there are a large number of
collisions needed, clouds with great
vertical extent are typically produce
precipitation by this process.

Approximate size of types of Precipitation

less than 0.5mm

0.5 5 mm
0.005-0.05 mm

Mist

drizzle

rain/sleet

Forms of Precipitation
(Rain, Snow, Sleet and Glaze, Hail)
Droplet size determines the type of precipitation.

Rain
Rain is the term for drops of water that fall from a cloud
and have a diameter of 0.5 millimeter (mm). Drizzle and mist
have smaller droplets.
Rain mostly occurs in nimbostratus clouds and cumulonimbus
clouds. These clouds are capable of producing cloudbursts.
Most rain starts as snow or ice crystals; as the snow falls through
the cloud it melts. Drizzle is a fine uniform water droplet with a
diameter less than 0.5 mm.

Temperature Profile for Rain

Snow
Snow is precipitation in the form of ice crystals (snowflakes) or
more often, aggregates if ice crystals. The size and structure of
the crystals is a function of the temperature at which they form.
When air temperatures are cold the moisture content is very
small. This results in the formation of very light fluffy snow
made up of six sided ice crystals.
When conditions are warmer,
the ice crystals join together into
larger clumps consisting
interlocked aggregates of crystals.

Temperature Profile for Snow

Sleet and Glaze

Sleet is a wintertime phenomenon that refers to the fall of small
particles of ice that are clear to translucent.
Sleet forms when rain
passes through a cold
layer of air and freezes
into ice pellets. This
occurs most often in
the winter when warm
air is forced over a layer
of cold air.

Temperature Profile for Sleet and Glaze

Hail
Hail is precipitation in the form of hard, rounded pellets or
irregular lumps of ice. The layers of ice accumulate as the
hailstone travels up and down in a strong convective cloud.
Hailstones begin as small
ice pellets that grow by adding
supercooled water droplets as
they move through the cloud. As
the ice crystal cycles up and down
in the cloud the hailstones increase
in size until they are forced out by
a downdraft or become heavy
enough to fall out.

Hail

This large hailstone fell from a tornadic supercell northeast of

Breckenridge, TX. The stones left a path miles wide littered with three to
four and one half inch stones. The hail fell from a dark cloud base to the
south of a developing mesocyclone. No rain or thunder occurred in the
immediate area while the stones were coming down.

Rime

Rime is a deposit of ice crystals formed by the freezing of super coole

or cloud droplets on objects whose surface temperature is below freez
When rime forms on trees, it covers them with ice feathers; in windy
conditions only the windward surfaces will accumulate the layer of ri

Table 5-4

Precipitation Measurements
Standard Instruments:
Simple rain gauge, standard rain gauge, tipping bucket gauge,
weighing gauge

Radar Summary

Good estimates of rainfall amounts can be obtain from radar

summaries. Radar is less reliable for frozen precipitation.
Coverage still sparse in many locations.

Tropical Rain Measuring Mission (TRMM)

Idealized Global Precipitation Representation

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)

As of late 1997, measurements of the global

distribution of rainfall at the Earth's surface
had uncertainties of the order of 50% and the
global distribution of vertical profiles of
precipitation was far less well determined.

TRMM will provide the first

spaceborne rain radar and
microwave radiometric data
that will measure the vertical
distribution of precipitation
over the tropics in a band
between 35' in latitude.
Such information will greatly
enhance our understanding
of the interactions between
the sea, air and land masses
which produce changes in
global rainfall and climate.
TRMM observations will also
help improve modeling of
tropical rainfall processes and
their influence on global
circulation leading to better
predictions of rainfall and its
variability at various time scales.

Intentional Weather Modification

The deliberate human intervention to influence atmospheric
processes that constitute the weather.
Much of the motivation to attempt weather modification techniques
was based on anecdotal evidence. Results
were never conclusive.
Hail cannons where popular in the late
1800s, with the belief that injection of smoke
particles into developing clouds could
increase the ice nuclei and reduce the size
of hailstones or suppress hail altogether.

The Moisture Accelerator!

Charles M. Hatfield (1876-1958)

Lots of people in Southern

California knew about Hatfield,
who by then rated folk hero
status. He called himself the
Moisture Accelerator, but others
knew him best as The
Rainmaker. Since 1902 when his
first experiments with chemicals
and "evaporating tanks"
dampened his father's ranch
near Oceanside, Hatfield had
pleased people in Los Angeles
and farmers in the Central and
San Joaquin valleys by fulfilling
hundreds of their rainmaking
contracts.

Cloud Seeding
1946 Vincent J. Schafer discovered that dry ice dropped into
supercooled clouds spurred the growth of ice crystals which
either induced precipitation or dispersed fog or clouds.

Cloud Seeding
In order for cloud seeding to trigger precipitation, conditions must
be just right.
Clouds must be present; seeding cannot create clouds.
A portion of the clouds must contain supercooled water.
One method assumes that the clouds are lacking in freezing nuclei
and adding them will stimulate precipitation by the Bergeron
process. One must be careful not to overseed as this will produce
too many, too small ice crystals.

Cloud Seeding

Precipitation is a complicated
process. After fifty years of cloud
seeding experimentation and study
the scientific community is still
lacking a full understanding of
precipitation processes.

Frost Prevention
Temperature zonation during
an inversion. Temperature
increases with height to the top
of the inversion and then
decreases. Frost protection
techniques use the warmer
air above the crop as
a heat source.

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