Identification

Title

Evaluation of orographic cloud seeding using a bin microphysics scheme: Three-dimensional simulation of real cases

Abstract

The University of Pécs and NCAR Bin (UPNB) microphysical scheme was implemented into the mesoscale Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) Model that was used to study the impact of silver iodide (AgI) seeding on precipitation formation in winter orographic clouds. Four different experimental units were chosen from the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Project to simulate the seeding effect. The results of the numerical experiments show the following: (i) Comparisons with the soundings, snow gauges, and microwave radiometer data indicate that the three-dimensional simulations with detailed microphysics reasonably represent both the dynamics and the microphysics of real clouds. (ii) The dispersion of the AgI particles from the simulated ground-based seeding was effective because of turbulent mixing. (iii) In the investigated cases (surface temperature is less than 0°C), surface precipitation and precipitation efficiency show low susceptibility to the concentrations of cloud condensation nuclei and natural ice nucleating particles. (iv) If the available liquid water content promotes the enhancement of the number of snowflakes by diffusional growth, the surface precipitation can be increased by more than 5%. A novel parameter relevant to orographic clouds, horizontally integrated liquid water path (LWP), was evaluated to find the relation between seeding efficiency and liquid water content. The impact of seeding is negligible if the horizontal LWP is less than 0.1 mm and is apparent if the horizontal LWP is larger than 1 mm, as based on the cases investigated in this study.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7w0997g

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

2020-09-24T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

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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