ALBERT

Description: Recent observational studies from the Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime clouds: the Idaho Experiment (SNOWIE) project have collected unprecedented measurements that demonstrate seeding with silver iodide (AgI) produces ice crystals that grow and fall to the ground as snow. These measurements include in situ and remote sensing data as well as ground-based observations to document the microphysics and precipitation formation processes in both natural and seeded clouds. The measurements from SNOWIE provide a rich dataset for studying the impacts of cloud seeding on orographic precipitation, as well as for improving understanding of the natural physics in orographic clouds that influence precipitation formation.In parallel, new supercomputing and sophisticated modeling capabilities have recently advanced our ability to simulate orographic precipitation. This laid the foundation to develop the WRF-WxMod® model, which simulates the physical effects of AgI seeding. WRF-WxMod is an innovative capability to evaluate the impacts of cloud seeding in controlled numerical experiments. Furthermore, when combined with detailed observations, such as from SNOWIE, WRF-WxMod provides new opportunities to transform our understanding of cloud seeding impacts as well as to investigate the impacts of cloud seeding across a variety of scales. This presentation will provide highlights of the research from SNOWIE that has advanced our understanding of natural and seeded orographic clouds and demonstrate the utility of WRF-WxMod to quantify the impacts of cloud seeding.