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Dendritic ice crystals imaged with a scanning electron microscope. The colors are computer generated. The aerospace industry is working to design a radar that can detect ice crystal environments to discern hazardous flight conditions. Ice crystals can melt when they touch the surface of warm aircraft, and refreeze due to environmental conditions.
A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow. [1] [2] [3] Snow appears white in color despite being made of clear ice. This is because the many small crystal facets of the snowflakes scatter the sunlight between them. [4]
Because water droplets are so much more numerous than the ice crystals, the crystals are able to grow to hundreds of micrometers or millimeters in size at the expense of the water droplets by the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process. These large crystals are an efficient source of precipitation, since they fall through the atmosphere due to ...
Ice crystals (also diamond dust) – Suspended in the atmosphere as needles, columns or plates at very low temperatures in a stable atmosphere. [15] Ice pellets – Two manifestations, sleet and small hail, that result in irregular spherical particles, which typically bounce upon impact. Sleet comprises grains of ice that form from refreezing ...
Precipitation occurs when evapotranspiration takes place and local air becomes saturated with water vapor, and so can no longer maintain the level of water vapor in gaseous form, which creates clouds. This occurs when less dense moist air cools, usually when an air mass rises through the atmosphere to higher and cooler altitudes.
Diamond dust is a ground-level cloud composed of tiny ice crystals. This meteorological phenomenon is also referred to simply as ice crystals and is reported in the METAR code as IC. Diamond dust generally forms under otherwise clear or nearly clear skies, so it is sometimes referred to as clear-sky precipitation.
The size of each ice crystal is typically 0.25 millimeters, [23] but they range from as short as 0.01 millimeters up to several millimeters. [56] The ice crystals in contrails can be much smaller than those in naturally-occurring cirrus cloud, being around 0.001 millimeters to 0.1 millimeters in length. [35]
Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. [1] [2] Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus and is heavily influenced by nearby bodies of water, topography, and wind conditions.