1,1,1,1,3- 1Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research Atmospheric Aerosol Research, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
- 2Steirische Hagelabwehrgenossenschaft eGen, Feldkirchen, Austria
- 3Graz University of Technology, Institute of Microwave and Photonic Engineering, Graz, Austria
Hailstorms regularly damage assets, destroy crops, and harm people. A single hailstorm can cause more than USD $1b in damage, and hail is a significant contributor to insured losses in many areas. For decades, glaciogenic cloud seeding (GCS) has been applied in an attempt to reduce hail damage, and yet there are important gaps in our understanding of how hailstorms are affected by release of highly efficient ice-nucleating particles into developing convective cells. While careful cloud-resolving modeling based on in-situ and remote observations before and after the hailstone event is critical for estimating the potential effect of GCS, some microphysics parameters and mechanisms are insufficiently understood or completely missing.
To partly fill these gaps, we have conducted measurements of the ice-nucleating efficiency of GCS particles emitted by the generator built by the hail prevention cooperative "Steirische Hagelabwehr Genossenschaft eGen" based in Graz, Austria [1]. The generator, normally mounted on an aircraft, is designed to deploy steady flux of sub-micrometer AgI-containing particles into the area of the strongest updraft beneath a developing thunderstorm cell. The IN efficiency of fresh and aged GCS particles has been measured with the Portable Ice Nucleation Experiment (PINE) setup [2] and by sampling the GCS particles on Nuclepore® membrane filters for further analysis. The IN material has been washed from the filters and studied with the Ice Nucleation Spectrometer of the KIT (INSEKT) at IMKAAF. Additionally, the morphology and chemical composition of GCS particles have been analyzed with nanometer-scale resolution using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), providing detailed insights into the mechanism of ice nucleation by AgI-containing particles. The preliminary results of this study, as well as their implications for the GCS approach, will be presented in this contribution.
References:
[1] Steirische Hagelabwehrgenossenschaft eGen (https://hagelabwehr.at/)
[2] Möhler, O., et al.: The Portable Ice Nucleation Experiment (PINE): a new online instrument for laboratory studies and automated long-term field observations of ice-nucleating particles, AMT, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-1143-2021, 2021.
How to cite: Kiselev, A. A., Arnold, L., Böhmländer, A., Bartoli, A., Lacher, L., Möhler, O., Mündler, J., Mossbacher, F., Zinser, E., and Tani, S.: Ice nucleating properties of glaciogenic cloud seeding (GCS) material, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-18672, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-18672, 2026.
