My WebLink
|
Help
|
About
|
Sign Out
Home
Browse
Search
WMOD00269
CWCB
>
Weather Modification
>
DayForward
>
WMOD00269
Metadata
Thumbnails
Annotations
Entry Properties
Last modified
7/28/2009 2:31:54 PM
Creation date
10/22/2007 11:47:37 AM
Metadata
Fields
Template:
Weather Modification
Title
The Southern Plains Experiment in Cloud Seeding of Thunderstorms for Rainfall Augmentation Phase I (SPECTRA 1)
Prepared For
Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation
Prepared By
Duncan Axisa, Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research
Date
3/1/2006
State
TX
Weather Modification - Doc Type
Report
There are no annotations on this page.
Document management portal powered by Laserfiche WebLink 9 © 1998-2015
Laserfiche.
All rights reserved.
/
119
PDF
Print
Pages to print
Enter page numbers and/or page ranges separated by commas. For example, 1,3,5-12.
After downloading, print the document using a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader).
Show annotations
View images
View plain text
TEXARC 1994 and 1995 results suggest the importance of when and where the various microphysical <br />processes take place within the cloud and when and where the seeding takes place that is intended to <br />alter these processes. Both the Rosenfeld/Woodley conceptual model and these results suggest that, <br />when seeding for rain enhancement, it is crucial to produce glaciation artificially within the vigorous <br />supercooled updraft region of the cloud. It is in this region that large artificially nucleated precipitation- <br />sized particles can be grown most efficiently. Accomplishing this through seeding requires great care in <br />the placement of the nucleant either in the updraft directly near cloud top or in the strong inflow region at <br />cloud base in well-developed convective systems (Rosenfeld and Woodley, 1997). <br />The TEXARC research effort continued in 1998 under the auspices of the TNRCC. The core-effort in <br />1998 involved the use of a cloud physics aircraft (a Piper Cheyenne turbo prop) in the period from 6 <br />through 27 September 1998 to study the effects of seeding on Texas supercooled clouds. Weather <br />Modification, Inc. in Fargo, North Dakota supplied the aircraft. Prior to its arrival in Texas it was being <br />used in Mexico in a hygroscopic seeding experiment under the direction of the National Center for <br />Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. <br />During TEXARC 1998 there were 15 flights on 13 days with the expenditure of 33.87 flight hours by the <br />Cheyenne cloud physics aircraft. There were 5 flights on 5 days with the qualification of 21 cloud physics <br />units. <br />The initial motivation for the research was the testing of two silver iodide (AgI) flares that had been tested <br />previously in the laboratory. The first flare was the TB1 formulation, which acts by contact nucleation and <br />has been available to the weather modification community for many years. The second flare formulation <br />was given the BF1 designation after its developer, Dr. William Finnegan, who has assisted Texas with its <br />flare development. The BF1 flare acts by condensation freezing. These tests were part of a program that <br />developed a seeding flare for Texas. The BF1 flare was found to outperform the TB1 flare in terms of the <br />rapidity of induced glaciation and the total number of generated ice particles, although the measured <br />differences in the clouds were small. This is consistent with the results of laboratory testing. Both flares <br />produced similar changes in the clouds relative to those receiving no treatment. <br />The second motivation for the tests was to learn more about how seeding affects the draft and <br />microphysical structure of the clouds. This was done in the context of the cold-cloud conceptual seeding <br />model, which had been under development for many years. <br />The cloud physics aircraft was equipped with reverse-flow temperature and dew point probes to make <br />atmospheric soundings close in time and space to the intended cloud studies. It had a Ball variometer for <br />the inference of cloud drafts. The PMS probes on the Texas cloud physics aircraft were used to measure <br />droplet and particle sizes in the range from 3 to 800 microns. The FSSP probe was used to document <br />the development of the cloud droplet spectrum with height, beginning at and about 100 meters above <br />cloud base. The 2DC probe was used to document the habit, concentrations and sizes of the cloud <br />hydrometeors before and after cloud treatment as the aircraft flew perpendicular to the seeding curtain. <br />The aircraft was equipped also to measure total aerosols and CCN using PCASP and CCN <br />instrumentation, respectively. <br />The conclusions made were that seeding appears to result in the production of graupel ice in invigorated <br />updraft regions with a concomitant decrease in the cloud water as required by the conceptual model. <br />This gives greater impetus for the use of AgI seeding for rain enhancement (Woodley and Rosenfeld, <br />2000). <br />An example of what is now called “secondary seeding” comes from TEXARC during the September 1998 <br />cloud physics program when randomized microphysical case studies were qualified (Woodley and <br />Rosenfeld, 2000). The subject cloud was qualified at 18:33 CDT on 22 September 1998 and treated with <br />nine, 20-gm, BF-1, AgI flares as determined by the randomized treatment decision. <br />Secondary seeding is not unique to seeded clouds nor is it a rare event. Rosenfeld and Woodley (1997) <br />discuss a case, showing that “clouds that existed in a clustered environment and had ingested embryos <br />from decayed clouds contained large raindrops on the initial pass through active cloud towers. <br />12 <br />
The URL can be used to link to this page
Your browser does not support the video tag.