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1. Oriented Ice Crystals: A Single-Scattering Property Database for Applications to Lidar and Optical Phenomenon Simulations

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-19-0031.1  

   Saito, Masanori ; Yang, Ping ( August 2019 , Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences)

   A database (TAMUoic2019) of the scattering, absorption, and polarization properties of horizontally oriented hexagonal plates (HOPs) and horizontally oriented hexagonal columns (HOCs) at three wavelengths (355, 532, and 1064 nm) is developed for applications to radiative transfer simulations and remote sensing implementations involving oriented ice crystals. The maximum dimension of oriented ice crystals ranges from 50 to 10 000 μm in 165 discrete size bins. The database accounts for 94 incident directions. The single-scattering properties of oriented ice crystals are computed with the physical-geometric optics method (PGOM), which is consistent with the invariant-imbedding T-matrix method for particles with size parameters larger than approximately 100–150. Note that the accuracy of PGOM increases as the size parameter increases. PGOM computes the two-dimensional phase matrix as a function of scattering polar and azimuth angles, and the phase matrix significantly varies with the incident direction. To derive the bulk optical properties of ice clouds for practical radiative transfer applications, the optical properties of individual HOPs and HOCs are averaged over the probability distribution of the tilting angle of oriented ice crystals based on the use of the TAMUoic2019 database. Simulations of lidar signals associated with ice clouds based on the bulk optical propertiesmore »indicate the importance of the fraction of oriented ice crystals and the probability distribution of the tilting angle. Simulations of optical phenomena caused by oriented ice crystals demonstrate that the computed single-scattering properties of oriented ice crystals are physically rational.

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2. Radiative Influence of Horizontally Oriented Ice Crystals over Summit, Greenland

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD028963  

   Stillwell, Robert A. ; Neely, III, Ryan R. ; Thayer, Jeffrey P. ; Walden, Von P. ; Shupe, Matthew D. ; Miller, Nathaniel B. ( November 2019 , Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres)

   Ice crystals commonly adopt a horizontal orientation under certain aerodynamic and electrodynamic conditions that occur in the atmosphere. While the radiative impact of horizontally oriented ice crystals (HOIC) has been theoretically studied with respect to their impact on shortwave cloud albedo, the longwave impact remains unexplored. This work analyzes the occurrence of HOIC at Summit, Greenland, from July 2015 to June 2017. Using polarization lidar and ancillary atmospheric sensors, ice crystal orientations are identified and used to interpret cloud radiative impact on the surface radiation budget. We find HOIC occur in at least 25.6% of all ice‐only column observations. We find that the shortwave impact of HOIC is to increase cloud radiative effect by approximately 22% for a given solar zenith angle. We also find that the longwave impact of HOIC compared to randomly oriented ice crystals are statistically different at the p < 0.01 significance level, increasing the surface radiative effect by approximately 8% for clouds with infrared optical depths < ~1. We suggest that the observed difference between the surface radiative effect for clouds containing randomly oriented ice crystals and HOIC may be due to enhanced scattering, but this hypothesis needs to be further explored with moremore »detailed observations and modeling.

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3. Enhanced piezoelectricity from highly polarizable oriented amorphous fractions in biaxially oriented poly(vinylidene fluoride) with pure β crystals

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20662-7  

   Huang, Yanfei ; Rui, Guanchun ; Li, Qiong ; Allahyarov, Elshad ; Li, Ruipeng ; Fukuto, Masafumi ; Zhong, Gan-Ji ; Xu, Jia-Zhuang ; Li, Zhong-Ming ; Taylor, Philip L. ; et al ( December 2021 , Nature Communications)

   Abstract Piezoelectric polymers hold great potential for various electromechanical applications, but only show low performance, with | d 33  | < 30 pC/N. We prepare a highly piezoelectric polymer ( d 33  = −62 pC/N) based on a biaxially oriented poly(vinylidene fluoride) (BOPVDF, crystallinity = 0.52). After unidirectional poling, macroscopically aligned samples with pure β crystals are achieved, which show a high spontaneous polarization ( P s ) of 140 mC/m 2 . Given the theoretical limit of P s,β  = 188 mC/m 2 for the neat β crystal, the high P s cannot be explained by the crystalline-amorphous two-phase model (i.e., P s,β  = 270 mC/m 2 ). Instead, we deduce that a significant amount (at least 0.25) of an oriented amorphous fraction (OAF) must be present between these two phases. Experimental data suggest that the mobile OAF resulted in the negative and high d 33 for the poled BOPVDF. The plausibility of this conclusion is supported by molecular dynamics simulations.
4. Morphology of diesel soot residuals from supercooled water droplets and ice crystals: implications for optical properties

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114010  

   China, Swarup ; Kulkarni, Gourihar ; Scarnato, Barbara V. ; Sharma, Noopur ; Pekour, Mikhail ; Shilling, John E. ; Wilson, Jacqueline ; Zelenyuk, Alla ; Chand, Duli ; Liu, Shang ; et al ( November 2015 , Environmental Research Letters)
5. The Transition from Supercooled Liquid Water to Ice Crystals in Mixed-phase Clouds based on Airborne In-situ Observations

   Flor Vanessa Maciel ; Minghui Diao ( October 2022 , Atmospheric measurement techniques Papers in open discussion)

   The on-set of ice nucleation in mixed-phase clouds determines cloud lifetime and their microphysical properties. In this work, we develop a novel method that differentiates the early and later transition phases of mixed-phase clouds, i.e., ice crystals are initially surrounded by supercooled liquid water droplets, then as they grow, pure ice segments are formed. Using this method, we examine the relationship between the macrophysical and microphysical properties of mixed-phase clouds. The results show that evolution of cloud macrophysical properties, represented by the increasing spatial ratio of regions containing ice crystals relative to the total in-cloud region (defined as ice spatial ratio), is positively correlated with the evolution of microphysical properties, represented by the increasing ice water content and decreasing liquid water content. The mass partition transition from liquid to ice becomes more significant during the later transition phase (i.e., transition phase 3) when pure ice cloud regions (ICRs) start to appear. Occurrence frequencies of cloud thermodynamic phases show significant transition from liquid to ice at a similar temperature (i.e., -17.5 °C) among three types of definitions of mixed-phase clouds based on ice mass fraction, ice number fraction, or ice spatial ratio. Aerosol indirect effects are quantified for different transition phasesmore »using number concentrations of aerosols greater than 100 nm or 500 nm (N>100 and N>500, respectively). N>500 shows stronger positive correlations with ice spatial ratios compared with N>100. This result indicates that larger aerosols potentially contain ice nucleating particles, which facilitate the formation of ice crystals in mixed-phase clouds. The impact of N>500 is also more significant on the earlier transition phase when ice crystals just start to appear compared with the later transition phase. The thermodynamic and dynamic conditions are quantified for each transition phase. The results show in-cloud turbulence as a main mechanism for both the initiation of ice nucleation and the maintenance of supercooled liquid water, while updrafts are important for the latter but not the former. Overall, these results illustrate the varying effects of aerosols, thermodynamics, and dynamics throughout cloud evolution based on this new method that categorizes cloud transition phases.« less