Corrected Liquid Water Path Data and mascpy code for "Graupel Precipitating from Thin Arctic Clouds with Liquid Water Paths less than 50 g m-2"

Thin boundary layer Arctic mixed-phase clouds are generally thought to precipitate pristine and aggregate ice crystals. Here we present automated surface photographic measurements showing that only 35\% of precipitation particles exhibit negligible riming and that graupel particles $\geq1\,\rm{mm}$ in diameter commonly fall from clouds with liquid water paths less than $50\,\rm{g\,m^{-2}}$. A simple analytical formulation predicts that significant riming enhancement can occur in updrafts with speeds typical of Arctic clouds, and observations show that such conditions are favored by weak temperature inversions and strong radiative cooling at cloud top. However, numerical simulations suggest that a mean updraft speed of $0.75\,\rm{m\,s^{-1}}$ would need to be sustained for over one hour. Graupel can efficiently remove moisture and aerosols from the boundary layer. The causes and impacts of Arctic riming enhancement remain to be determined.

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Last Updated January 31, 2026, 21:57 (UTC)
Created January 31, 2026, 21:57 (UTC)
Controlled Vocabularies NASA
Dates Created Code creation: 2016-12-08 to 2018-06-09; Processed: 2017-06-27; Processed: 2019-03-20
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7278/s50dva5jk2pd
Resource URL https://hive.utah.edu/concern/datasets/dv13zt284
Subjects Atmospheric sciences; Computational research; Arctic research