We thank the graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Colorado (Josh Aikins and Robinson Wallace), University of Wyoming (Adam Tripp, Adam Majewski, and Spencer Faber), and University of Illinois (Adam Springer and Andrew Janiszeski) for their help operating and deploying instruments during the campaign. David Plummer, Matt Burkhart, Zane Little, Brent Glover, Ben Heesen, Tom Drew, and Brett Wadsworth and from the cloud seeding aircraft from Weather Modification International (WMI) for their dedication during very difficult and exhausting operating conditions in cold and windy snowstorms. Joshua Wurman, Traeger Meyer, Marcus Guitierrez, Andrew Frambach, and Paul Robinson from the WKA at the University of Wyoming, in particular, Dr. We greatly appreciate the superb and laborious efforts of the crews from the DOW radars from the Center of Severe Weather Research (CSWR), in particular, Dr. These observations are unambiguous and provide details of the physical chain of events following the introduction of glaciogenic cloud seeding aerosol into supercooled liquid orographic clouds.
These data, by themselves, do not address the question of cloud seeding efficacy, but rather form a critical set of observations necessary for such investigations. Here, measurements from radars and aircraft-mounted cloud physics probes are presented that together show the initiation, growth, and fallout to the mountain surface of ice crystals resulting from glaciogenic seeding. Despite numerous experiments spanning several decades, no direct observations of this process exist. The hypothesized chain of events begins with the introduction of silver iodide aerosol into cloud regions containing supercooled liquid water, leading to the nucleation of ice crystals, followed by ice particle growth to sizes sufficiently large such that snow falls to the ground. The intent of glaciogenic seeding of orographic clouds is to introduce aerosol into a cloud to alter the natural development of cloud particles and enhance wintertime precipitation in a targeted region.
Little direct scientific evidence exists that confirms even the basic physical hypothesis upon which cloud seeding relies. Water managers are tantalized by the prospect of cloud seeding as a way to increase winter snowfall, thereby shifting the balance between water supply and demand.
Growing populations place higher demands on water, while warmer winters and earlier springs reduce its supply. Throughout the western United States and other semiarid mountainous regions across the globe, water supplies are fed primarily through the melting of snowpack.
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