Explosive origins of 'secondary' ice and snow
"... "rime splintering" isn't nearly the whole story.
"The new results from the Arctic show ... larger supercooled water droplets, classified as drizzle, play a much more important role in producing secondary ice particles than commonly thought.
" "When an ice particle hits one of those drizzle drops, it triggers freezing, which first forms a solid ice shell around the drop," explained Fan Yang, a co-author on the paper. "Then, as the freezing moves inward, the pressure starts to build because water expands as it freezes. That pressure causes the drizzle drop to shatter, generating more ice particles."
"... drizzle freezing fragmentation can enhance ice particle concentrations in clouds by 10 to 100 times -- and even 1,000 on occasion!"
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