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Global Importance of Secondary Ice Production
Author(s) -
Zhao Xi,
Liu Xiaohong
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2021gl092581
Subject(s) - environmental science , longwave , atmospheric sciences , shortwave , liquid water path , ice crystals , graupel , sea ice growth processes , clear ice , ice nucleus , climatology , sea ice , cryosphere , sea ice thickness , precipitation , antarctic sea ice , meteorology , geology , physics , nucleation , radiative transfer , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics
Abstract Measured ice crystal number concentrations are often orders of magnitude higher than the number concentrations of ice nucleating particles, indicating the existence of secondary ice production (SIP) in clouds. Here, we present the first study to examine the global importance of SIP through the droplet shattering during freezing of rain, ice‐ice collision fragmentation, and rime splintering, using a global climate model. Our results show that SIP happens quite uniformly in the two hemispheres and dominates the ice formation in the moderately cold clouds with temperatures warmer than −15°C. SIP decreases the global annual average liquid water path by −14.6 g m −2 (−22%), increases the ice water path by 8.7 g m −2 (23%), improving the model agreement with observations. SIP changes the global annual average shortwave, longwave, and net cloud forcing by 2.1, −1.0, and 1.1 W m −2 , respectively, highlighting the importance of SIP on cloud properties on the global scale.

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