The supercooled warm rain process and the specification of freezing precipitation

Abstract

About 30% of freezing precipitation cases are observed to occur in a subfreezing atmosphere (contrary to the classical melting ice model). We explain these cases with the concept of the "supercooled warm rain process' (SWRP): the warm rain process can yield liquid hydrometeors at subfreezing temperatures whenever too few ice nuclei are available to create solid hydrometeors. We find that all the freezing precipitation cases in a subfreezing atmosphere show a rapid decrease of moisture content in the zone above the inferred cloud top (decreasing from liquid to ice saturation in <20mb), at temperatures ranging from 0° to -10°C. Additionally, this structure prevails among freezing cases (43%) much more than among solid or liquid cases (10% and 15%, respectively). -from Authors