The Growth and Morphology of Small Ice Crystals in a Diffusion Chamber

Small water ice crystals are the main component of cold tropospheric clouds such as cirrus. Because these clouds cover large areas of our planet, their role in the radiation budget of incoming and outgoing radiation to the planet’s surface is important. At present, the representation of these clouds in climate and weather models is subject to improvements: a large part of the uncertainty error stems from the lack of precise micro-physical and radiation model schemes for ice crystal clouds. To improve the cloud representations, a better understanding of the life time dynamics of the clouds and their composition is necessary, comprising a detailed understanding of the ice particle genesis, and development over their lifetime. It is especially important to understand how the development of ice crystals over time is linked to the changes in observable variables such as water vapour content and temperature and how they change the light scattering properties of the crystals. Recent remote and aircraft based in-situ measurements have shown that many ice particles show a light scattering behaviour typical for crystals having rough surfaces or being of complex geometrical shapes. The aim of this thesis was to develop the experimental setup and experiments to investigate this further by studying the surface morphology of small water ice crystals using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The experiments I developed study the growth of water ice crystals inside an SEM chamber under controlled environmental conditions. The influence of water vapour supersaturation, pressure and temperature is investigated. I demonstrate how to retrieve the surface topology from observed crystals for use as input to computational light scattering codes to derive light scattering phase functions and asymmetry parameters, which can be used as input into atmospheric models. Difficulties with the method for studying the growth of water ice crystals, such as the effect of the electron beam-gas ionization and charging effects, the problem of facilitating repeated and localized ice growth, and the effect of radiative influences on the crystal growth are discussed. A broad set of nucleation target materials is studied.