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Magee et al. 2006
Magee, N., Moyle, A.M. and Lamb, D. (2006). Experimental determination of the deposition coefficient of small cirrus-like ice crystals near -50°C. Geophysical Research Letters 33: doi: 10.1029/2006GL026665. issn: 0094-8276.

Several small ice particles were observed to grow and evaporate in a quadrupole electrodynamic levitation cell at temperatures between -40 and -60¿C and variable supersaturation. The particle mass was traced throughout each experiment by analysis of the electrical ("springpoint") boundaries for stable levitation. Measured growth of each particle was compared with that calculated from a standard particle-growth model. The small particle sizes and long durations of the experiments provided great sensitivity to the particle-mean deposition coefficient (αm). Suitable agreement between the measured and modeled growth histories was obtainable only upon using very small deposition coefficients: e.g., 0.0045 < αm < 0.0075, with αm ~ 0.006 being the most-likely value for a representative particle growing at -50¿C. This finding of such low deposition coefficients suggests that cirrus-cloud simulations need to account for the strong influence that the surface-kinetic resistance exerts on the vapor growth of ice at atmospherically low temperatures.

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Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906), Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Cloud physics and chemistry, Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Instruments and techniques, Atmospheric Processes, Clouds and aerosols, Atmospheric Processes, Clouds and cloud feedbacks
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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