Quantifying ice crystal growth rates in natural clouds from glaciogenic cloud seeding experiments

Fuchs, Christopher; Ramelli, Fabiola; Miller, Anna J.; Omanovic, Nadja; Spirig, Robert; Zhang, Huiying; Seifert, Patric; Ohneiser, Kevin; Lohmann, Ulrike; Henneberger, Jan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-12177-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-12177-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-12177-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 19

Research article

|

07 Oct 2025

Research article |

| 07 Oct 2025

Quantifying ice crystal growth rates in natural clouds from glaciogenic cloud seeding experiments

Christopher Fuchs, Fabiola Ramelli, Anna J. Miller, Nadja Omanovic, Robert Spirig, Huiying Zhang, Patric Seifert, Kevin Ohneiser, Ulrike Lohmann, and Jan Henneberger

Data sets

Data for the publication "Quantifying ice crystal growth rates in natural clouds from glaciogenic cloud seeding experiments" Christopher Fuchs et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15804055

Model code and software

Scripts for figures in publication "Quantifying ice crystal growth rates in natural clouds from glaciogenic cloud seeding experiments" Christopher Fuchs et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15804067

Short summary

We quantify diffusional ice crystal growth in natural clouds using cloud seeding experiments. We report growth rates for 14 experiments between −5.1 °C and −8.3 °C and observe strong variations depending on the cloud characteristics. Comparing our growth rates to laboratory data, we found similar temperature-dependent trends, but the laboratory rates are higher. These data fill the gap in quantitative in situ observation of ice crystal growth, helping to validate models and laboratory experiments.