Identification

Title

Simulating wintertime orographic cloud seeding over the Snowy Mountains of Australia

Abstract

This study presents the first numerical simulations of seeded clouds over the Snowy Mountains of Australia. WRF-WxMod, a novel glaciogenic cloud-seeding model, was utilized to simulate the cloud response to winter orographic seeding under various meteorological conditions. Three cases during the 2018 seeding periods were selected for model evaluation, coinciding with an intensive ground-based measurement campaign. The campaign data were used for model validation and evaluation. Comparisons between simulations and observations demonstrate that the model realistically represents cloud structures, liquid water path, and precipitation. Sensitivity tests were performed to pinpoint key uncertainties in simulating natural and seeded clouds and precipitation processes. They also shed light on the complex interplay between various physical parameters/ processes and their interaction with large-scale meteorology. Our study found that in unseeded scenarios, the warm and cold biases in different initialization datasets can heavily influence the intensity and phase of natural precipitation. Secondary ice production via Hallett-Mossop processes exerts a secondary influence. On the other hand, the seeding impacts are primarily sensitive to aerosol conditions and the natural ice nucleation process. Both factors alter the supercooled liquid water availability and the precipitation phase, consequently impacting the silver iodide (AgI) nucleation rate. Furthermore, model sensitivities were inconsistent across cases, indicating that no single model configuration optimally represents all three cases. This highlights the necessity of employing an ensemble approach for a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of the seeding impact. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Winter orographic cloud seeding has been conducted for decades over the Snowy Mountains of Australia for securing water resources. However, this study is the first to perform cloud-seeding simulation for a robust, event-based seeding impact evaluation. A state-of-the-art cloud-seeding model (WRF-WxMod) was used to simulate the cloud seeding and quantified its impact on the region. The Southern Hemisphere, due to low aerosol emissions and highly pristine cloud conditions, has distinctly different cloud microphysical characteristics than the Northern Hemisphere, where WRF-WxMod has been successfully applied in a few regions over the United States. The results showed that WRFWxMod could accurately capture the clouds and precipitation in both the natural and seeded conditions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7445rkc

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact