PRECIPITATION

What is Precipitation?

 In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation

of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity.
 is any type of water that forms in the Earth's atmosphere and then
drops onto the surface of the Earth.
 Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, and is responsible
for depositing the fresh water on the planet.

 Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometers (121,000 cu mi) of water falls as

precipitation each year; 398,000 cubic kilometers (95,000 cu mi) of it over
the oceans and 107,000 cubic kilometers (26,000 cu mi) over land.

 Given the Earth's surface area, that means the globally averaged annual
precipitation is 990 millimeters (39 in), but over land it is only 715
millimeters (28.1 in).
Precipitation Processes
It all begins with clouds…
 Clouds are composed of tiny water droplets from condensation onto CCN
For clouds to produce precipitation, cloud droplets must get bigger!
Water vapor,
Water vapor in the atmosphere is
droplets of water
visible as clouds and fog.
suspended in the
air, builds up in the
Earth's atmosphere.

Water vapor collects

with other materials,
such as dust, in clouds.
Precipitation
Clouds eventually
condenses, or forms,
get too full of water
around these tiny
vapor, and the
pieces of material,
precipitation turns
called cloud
into a liquid (rain) or
condensation nuclei
a solid (snow).
(CCN).
Necessary conditions
 When clouds form in the atmosphere, they are non-precipitating in 99% of
cases.
1. cooling of air (e.g. convectional /
cyclonic (frontal) uplifting)
2. condensation and cloud formation
3. an accumulation of moisture
4. the growth of cloud droplets - the most critical stage!!
Necessary conditions

 Raindrop size:
drizzle about 0.2 mm
light rain about 0.5 mm
small rain about 1.0 mm
rain about 5.0 mm
rainstorm up to about 7.0 mm
Growth of Cloud Droplets
 Condensation is only effective from nucleation up to around radii of 0.02
mm. There’s just too many drops, too little moisture

 So, for precipitation, we need another mechanism!

 This other mechanism depends on the type of cloud:

1) Warm clouds (totally > 0oC)
2) Cool and cold clouds (at least partially below 0oC)
Mechanism of
Precipitation Development
1. Collision-Coalescence theory
2. Bergeron-Findeisen process
Precipitation in Warm Clouds

 Collision – when cloud droplets collide with each other

 Collision efficiency depends on relative size of a collector drop and

droplets below
- Low efficiency for very small drops
- Low efficiency for same-size drops
- High efficiency for drops in between
these sizes
Collision - Coalescence Theory
 A droplet may continue to grow by
diffusion beyond 20 micrometers in
diameter, however, once a droplet
attains this size, growth is slow and
inefficient.

 Droplets this large begin to collide

and coalesce with other droplets as
they fall through the cloud, meaning
they will bump into and bond to one
another and form larger drops.
 Updrafts in a cloud can transport
a droplet upward repeatedly
allowing it many opportunities to
fall back down through the cloud
and collide and coalesce with other
droplets.
 Tiny aerosol nuclei grow into large
water droplets more than 10,000
times their initial size.
Precipitation in Cool/Cold Clouds
Bergeron – Findeisen Process
 Also known as the cold rain or ice crystal process
 As the formation of precipitation in the
cold clouds of the mid and upper
latitudes by ice crystal growth.
 The equilibrium vapor pressure over
water is greater than the saturation
vapor pressure over ice, at the same
temperature.
 Therefore in a mixed phase cloud, the liquid
water will be out of vapor pressure
equilibrium and will evaporate to reach
equilibrium.
 The water droplets will move toward
the lower pressure over the ice and
diffuse onto the ice crystals.
 The vapor will be condensed and
freeze onto the ice crystal, causing it
to grow larger.
 Once the Bergeron Process takes place, ice becomes big enough to fall,
and 2 additional processes occur:
1. Riming – ice collides with
super cooled water which freezes on
contact
2. Aggregation – ice crystals collide
and stick together
What are the forms of precipitation?
1. Rain
 Liquid deposits falling from the atmosphere to the
surface
- with a diameter > 0.5 mm
- < 0.5 mm: drizzle
- max. size: about 5 - 7 mm
(too large to remain suspended)
- beyond this size, inter-molecular cohesive
forces become to weak to be held in the mass of
water together as a single drop
 The nature of rain formation typically depends on location:

1. Tropics – warms clouds - rain forms by condensation, collision, and

coalescence
2. Mid-latitudes – cool clouds – rain forms as snow then melt

 Rain is also classified in terms of how it lasts in time

1. Steady (stratiform) rain – rain that lasts for long periods of time (hours)
2. Showers (cumuliform) rain – rain that is short-lasting (minutes)
2. Freezing Rain
 When falling liquid water droplets reaches a surface with a temperature
below freezing point so, the rain droplets quickly turn into ice
 Another condition: where the rain develops, the temperature of rain
develops must be above freezing
 Super cooled rain that freezes on contact or shortly after contact with
surface
 Some winter storms produce truly unable weather. In addition to snow,
there can be freezing rain, which is rain that freezes on contact with the
ground.
3. Sleet / Ice Pellets
 Transparent / translucent spheres of frozen water
- with a diameter > 5 mm
- develop first as raindrops in relatively warm
atmosphere (Temp: > freezing),
- then raindrops descend into a colder layer of the
atmosphere (Temp:<0oC)
- causing the freezing into ice pellets while reaching
the ground surface
- like freezing rain, an air temperature inversion is
required
 Ice pellets or sleet are a form of precipitation consisting of
small, translucent balls of ice. Ice pellets are usually (but not always)
smaller than hailstones. They often bounce when they hit the ground, and
generally do not freeze into a solid mass unless mixed with freezing rain.
4. Snow
 Snow is precipitation that falls in the form of ice crystals. The ice crystals are
formed individually in clouds, but when they fall, they stick together in
clusters of snowflakes.
 Commonly found in the mid- and high- latitudes
 It develops when water vapor deposits itself directly to a six-sided (hexagon)
deposition nuclei as a solid crystal, at temperature below freezing
 Snow is usually associated frontal uplifting with mid
latitude cyclones
 Snow crystals form when tiny super cooled cloud droplets
(about 10 μm in diameter) freeze. Once a droplet has
frozen, it grows in the supersaturated environment.
 5. Hail
 Like other precipitation, hail forms in storm clouds when super
cooled water droplets freeze on contact with condensation nuclei, such
as dust or dirt. The storm's updraft blows the hailstones to the upper part of the
cloud. The updraft dissipates and the hailstones fall down, back into the updraft,
and are lifted again.
 Hail has a diameter of 5 millimeters (0.20 in) or more.

 Strong uprising currents in thunderstorm clouds provide the mechanism for

forming hail the updrafts move hailstone embryos upward through the storm
cloud where they encounter layers of ice crystals, snow & super cooled rain each
encounter causes the hailstone to grow larger.
A typical hailstone growth path through a
thunderstorm cloud.
Hailstones add most of their mass during
updrafts.
 Diamond dust, also known as ice needles or ice crystals, forms at
temperatures approaching −40 °C (−40 °F) due to air with slightly higher
moisture from aloft mixing with colder, surface based air. They are made of
simple ice crystals that are hexagonal in shape.
 Sometimes, different types of
precipitation fall at the same time.
During harsh winter storms, for
instance, it is not unusual for sleet
and rain to fall at the same time.

Other times, precipitation doesn't fall at all.

Virga is a type of precipitation that begins to
fall from a cloud, but evaporates before it
reaches the surface of the Earth.
Frontal Activity
 Stratiform or dynamic precipitation occurs as a consequence of slow
ascent of air in synoptic systems (on the order of cm/s), such as over
surface cold fronts, and over and ahead of warm fronts. Similar ascent is
seen around tropical cyclones outside of the eye wall, and in comma-head
precipitation patterns around mid-latitude cyclones. A wide variety of
weather can be found along an occluded front, with thunderstorms
possible, but usually their passage is associated with a drying of the air
mass. Occluded fronts usually form around mature low-pressure areas.
Convective Rain, or showery precipitation,
occurs from convective clouds, e.g.,
cumulonimbus or cumulus congestus. It falls
as showers with rapidly changing intensity.
Convective precipitation falls over a certain
area for a relatively short time, as
convective clouds have limited horizontal
extent.

Orographic precipitation occurs on

the windward side of mountains and is
caused by the rising air motion of a large-
scale flow of moist air across the
mountain ridge, resulting
in adiabatic cooling and condensation.
Human activity can create precipitation. Urban heat islands, which are
areas around major cities that are much warmer than their surroundings,
lead to increased and more intense rainfall near cities.
Global warming also causes
changes in global precipitation.
When the planet is hotter, more
ice evaporates in the
atmosphere. That eventually
leads to more rainy
precipitation.
ARTIFICIALLY INDUCED PRECIPITATION

 RAINMAKING, artificial precipitation or artificial

rainfall, is the act of attempting to artificially induce
or increase precipitation, usually to stave off drought.
 According to the clouds' different physical properties, this can be done
using airplanes or rockets to sow to the clouds with catalysts such as dry
ice, silver iodide and salt powder, to make clouds rain or increase
precipitation, to remove or mitigate farmland drought, to increase
reservoir irrigation water or water supply capacity, or to increase water
levels for power generation
Cloud Seeding

 a form of weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or

type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into
the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the
microphysical processes within the cloud. The usual intent is to increase
precipitation (rain or snow), but hail and fog suppression are also widely
practiced in airports.