About The Author

Sylvia Sullivan is a researcher at Columbia University. her research areas include atmospheric physics, precipitation, climate modeling, and boundary layer meteorology. She studies the structure and properties of mesoscale convective systems, as well as the transition from shallow to deep atmospheric convection.

Mechanical Production Of Ice Crystals In Clouds

Sylvia Sullivan & Athanasios Nenes |  

Above about four kilometers up in the atmosphere, clouds begin to contain both liquid droplets and ice crystals. Because two phases of water coexist, a variety of interesting small-scale processes can occur in the cloud: droplets can coalesce and ice crystals can aggregate or droplets can collide with ice crystals and freeze or ice crystals

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