Captured cirrus ice particles in high definition
| Autor: | Manisha Bandamede, Bryan Miner, Terance Schuh, D. S. Connelly, Katie Boaggio, Elissa Khoudary, Nicholas Tusay, Nathan Magee, Lucas Bancroft, Xuanyi Zhao, Samantha Staskiewicz, Aaron Lynn, Kevin Hurler |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Atmospheric Science
Ice crystals 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Scattering Physics QC1-999 Mesoscale meteorology 010502 geochemistry & geophysics 01 natural sciences Aerosol Chemistry Radiative transfer Particle Climate model Cirrus QD1-999 Geology Remote sensing 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol 21, Pp 7171-7185 (2021) |
| ISSN: | 1680-7324 1680-7316 |
| Popis: | Cirrus clouds composed of small ice crystals are often the first solid matter encountered by sunlight as it streams into Earth’s atmosphere. A broad array of recent research has emphasized that photon-particle scattering calculations are very sensitive to ice particle morphology, complexity, and surface roughness. Uncertain variations in these parameters have major implications for successfully parameterizing the radiative ramifications of cirrus clouds in climate models. To date, characterization of the microscale details of cirrus particle morphology has been limited by the particles’ inaccessibility and technical difficulty in capturing imagery with sufficient resolution. Results from a new experimental system achieve much higher resolution images of cirrus ice particles than existing airborne particle imaging systems. The novel system (Ice Cryo-Encapsulation by Balloon, ICE-Ball) employs a balloon-borne payload with environmental sensors and hermetically-sealed cryo-encapsulation cells. The payload captures ice particles from cirrus clouds, seals them, and returns them via parachute for vapor-locked transfer onto a cryo-scanning electron microscopy stage (cryo-SEM). From 2016–2019, the ICE-Ball system has successfully yielded high resolution particle images on nine cirrus-penetrating flights. On several flights, including one highlighted here in detail, thousands of cirrus particles were retrieved and imaged, revealing unanticipated particle morphologies, extensive habit heterogeneity, multiple scales of mesoscale roughening, a wide array of embedded aerosol particles, and even greater complexity than expected. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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