The Electrical Nucleation of Ice in Supercooled Clouds
Open Access
- 1 July 1971
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
- Vol. 28 (5) , 737-740
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1971)028<0737:tenoii>2.0.co;2
Abstract
An electrified wire suspended in a supercooled cloud generates a jet of ice crystals only when there is ice on the wire. On a clean platinum wire no ice forms an the wire down to −20C, but if the wire is coated with a hydrophobic material, ice nucleates on the wire at temperatures as high as −5C. The electrical field of the wire is found to be insufficient to promote ice nucleation by enhancing the free energy difference for the transformation of bulk supercooled water to ice. A mechanism is proposed to explain how the electric field induces an otherwise inert substrate to generate the let of ice crystals.Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: