Origin of diversity in falling snow

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic way to examine the origin of variety in falling snow. First, we define shape diversity as the logarithm of the number of possible distinguishable crystal forms for a given resolution and set of conditions, and then we examine three sources of diversity. Two sources are the range of initial-crystal sizes and variations in the trajectory variables. For a given set of variables, diversity is estimated using a model of a crystal falling in an updraft. The third source is temperature-updraft heterogeneities along each trajectory. To examine this source, centimeterscale data on cloud temperature and updraft speed are used to estimate the spatial frequency (m -1) of crystal feature changes. For air-temperature heterogeneity, this frequency decays as p-0.66, where p is a measure of the temperaturedeviation size. For updraft-speed heterogeneity, the decay is p -0.50 By using these frequencies, the fallpath needed per feature change is found to range from ∼0.8m, for crystals near - 15°C, to ∼8m near - 19°C - lengths much less than total fallpath lengths. As a result, the third source dominates the diversity, with updraft heterogeneity contributing more than temperature heterogeneity. Plotted against the crystal's initial temperature (-11 to - 19°C), the diversity curve is "mitten shaped", having a broad peak near - 15.4°C and a sharp subpeak at - 14.4°C, both peaks arising from peaks in growth-rate sensitivity. The diversity is much less than previous estimates, yet large enough to explain observations. For example, of all snow crystals ever formed, those that began near - 15°C are predicted to all appear unique to 1-μm resolution, but those that began near - 11°C are not. © Author(s) 2008.