The impacts of secondary ice production on the microphysics and dynamics of mid-latitude cold season convection

Qu, Zhipeng; Korolev, Alexei; Milbrandt, Jason A.; Heckman, Ivan; Cholette, Mélissa; Nguyen, Cuong; Wolde, Mengistu

doi:10.5194/acp-25-17845-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 23

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-17845-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-17845-2025

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

Articles | Volume 25, issue 23

Research article

|

08 Dec 2025

Research article |

| 08 Dec 2025

The impacts of secondary ice production on the microphysics and dynamics of mid-latitude cold season convection

Zhipeng Qu, Alexei Korolev, Jason A. Milbrandt, Ivan Heckman, Mélissa Cholette, Cuong Nguyen, and Mengistu Wolde

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Dec 2025)
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Mar 2025)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-649', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Apr 2025

attached

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-649-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Zhipeng Qu, 08 Aug 2025
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-649/egusphere-2025-649-AC1-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-649-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-649', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jun 2025

The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-649/egusphere-2025-649-RC2-supplement.pdf

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-649-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Zhipeng Qu, 08 Aug 2025
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-649/egusphere-2025-649-AC2-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-649-AC2

Peer review completion

AR – Author's response | RR – Referee report | ED – Editor decision | EF – Editorial file upload

AR by Zhipeng Qu on behalf of the Authors (08 Aug 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (14 Aug 2025) by Yi Huang

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (28 Aug 2025)

RR by Xiaohong Liu (24 Sep 2025)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I appreciate the authors to make good efforts to address my comments on the manuscript, particularly improving the introduction to the model parameterizations, and quantifying the uncertainty of the FFD parameterization, and testing the third SIP process (ice-ice collisional breakup (CB)). While the manuscript is in a good shape for acceptance, I still have some minor comments/corrects before the publication.

1. Line 94, "particles sizes" -> "particle sizes".

2. Line 142. "Because of this, each ice category in P3 can represent any type of ice-phase hydrometeor (with the limitations of a bulk scheme)." This sentence is a bit confusing. Can you be clear here what the limitations a bulk scheme are?

3. Line 158-159. "..., immersion/contact freezing of cloud droplets and rain drops (see Morrison and Milbrandt, 2015), ..." Can you give some detail of treatment of immersion/contact freezing based on Morrison and Milbrandt, 2015? Is it dependent on aerosol, or only on temperature?

4. Line 159. "heterogeneous nucleation via condensation freezing and deposition (Cooper, 1986)," please rewrite this to something like: condensation freezing of cloud droplets and rain drops (?) and deposition nucleation.

5. Figure 3. As I mentioned in the first round of my review, the unit (Y-axis) of Ni seems not correct. Currently it reads as 0-5 m^-3, while it should be 10^0 - 10^5 m^-3, if I understand correctly. This also applies to other similar figures.

6. Line 486-517. You talk about the heterogeneous nucleation (condensation freezing/deposition ice nucleation) for the importance of comparing the modeled and observed T - Ni histogram (Figure 18) in this flight and also include the red open circles from Cooper 1986. How about the role of immersion/contact freezing of cloud droplets and rain drops? In mixed-phase clouds, immersion/contact freezing could dominate the ice nucleation based on previous studies.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (27 Sep 2025) by Yi Huang

AR by Zhipeng Qu on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Oct 2025) by Yi Huang

AR by Zhipeng Qu on behalf of the Authors (13 Oct 2025)

Short summary

This study examines the impact of incorporating secondary ice production (SIP) parameterizations into high-resolution numerical weather prediction simulations for mid-latitude continental winter conditions. Aircraft in situ and remote sensing observations are used to evaluate the simulations. Results show that including SIP improves the representation of cloud and freezing rain properties, with its impact varying based on cloud regime, such as convective or stratiform.