Nikolov et al. (2025) How Complete Is Cloud Glaciation?

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-31
• Authors: Dragomir Nikolov, Ulrike Lohmann, Diego Villanueva
• DOI: 10.1029/2025gl120099

Research Groups

Not specified in abstract.

Short Summary

This study analyzes satellite observations of individual cloud tops to track their temporal phase evolution and quantify glaciation, finding that most glaciation events induce a sustained shift in cloud properties within the mixed-phase regime rather than complete freezing, and correlate with higher ice-nucleating particle concentrations.

Objective

• To track the temporal phase evolution of individual cloud tops using satellite observations.
• To quantify the extent of glaciation in stratiform clouds, particularly within the mixed-phase temperature range (0 °C to -38 °C), which can persist for hours.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Individual cloud tops; hemispheric and seasonal for correlation analysis.
• Temporal Scale: Minute to hourly for cloud evolution tracking; seasonal for ice-nucleating particle concentration correlation.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Not specified in abstract.
• Data sources: Satellite observations of individual cloud tops.

Main Results

• Most glaciation events do not lead to complete freezing but instead induce a sustained shift in cloud properties, with clouds remaining in the mixed-phase regime.
• Higher hemispheric and seasonal concentrations of ice-nucleating particles correlate with an increased glaciation occurrence rate.

Contributions

• Provides novel characterization of glaciation events and the temporal phase evolution of stratiform clouds using satellite observations.
• Generates phase-evolution and glaciation data sets that can be utilized by future studies to evaluate the performance of weather and climate models in simulating mixed-phase cloud evolution and phase heterogeneity.

Funding

Not specified in abstract.

Citation

@article{Nikolov2025How,
  author = {Nikolov, Dragomir and Lohmann, Ulrike and Villanueva, Diego},
  title = {How Complete Is Cloud Glaciation?},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025gl120099},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl120099}
}