Simulation of an Airborne Cloud Seeding Event during the SNOWIE Field Campaign

To better understand how silver iodide (AgI) seeding impacts wintertime orographic clouds and to improve the model capability to simulate such impacts, the Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime clouds: the Idaho Experiment (SNOWIE) field campaign was conducted between January–March 2017 based in Boise, Idaho. The fifth Intensive Observing Period (IOP5) from SNOWIE detected clear signals from aircraft seeding using both remote sensing and in-situ instruments. This IOP is thus simulated by an AgI Seeding Parameterization coupled into the Thompson-Eidhammer microphysics scheme as part of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The simulated environmental conditions are validated against project soundings. The simulated cloud structure, bulk properties, and precipitation are compared with data collected by the radiometer, Doppler On Wheels (DOWs) radars, the W-band Wyoming Cloud Radar (WCR) on board of the University of Wyoming King Air (UWKA) research aircraft, and ground-based snow gauges. The in-situ observations from the UWKA probes are also used to compare with the simulated seeding effect on cloud microphysics. The simulated seeding impacts on both the cloud and precipitation will be analyzed and presented.