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Shape and size of contrails ice particles
Author(s) -
Goodman J.,
Pueschel R. F.,
Jensen E. J.,
Verma S.,
Ferry G. V.,
Howard S. D.,
Kinne S. A.,
Baumgardner D.
Publication year - 1998
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 - 10.1029/97gl03091
Subject(s) - ice crystals , radius , effective radius , atmospheric sciences , crystal habit , crystal (programming language) , altitude (triangle) , hexagonal crystal system , meteorology , volume (thermodynamics) , geology , environmental science , materials science , physics , geometry , astrophysics , chemistry , crystallography , mathematics , thermodynamics , computer security , galaxy , computer science , crystallization , programming language
A NASA DC‐8, equipped as an in‐situ sampling aircraft, flew in the exhaust wake of a Boeing 757 on May 4, 1996 over Kansas. Ice crystal samples were collected by impaction technique and replicated twice about 8 to 17 km behind the aircraft at an altitude of 11.8 km. The ice crystals in the contrail ( after about 1 minute of growing time ) had a unimodal size distribution, with an equivalent volume radius of less than 10 µm and an effective radius of about 2 µm. The crystal habits at the observed temperature of −61C were predominantly hexagonal plates (75%), columns (20%) and few triagonal plates (<5%). The habit was already well defined for crystals about 0.5 µm in radius.