A quantitative study on the growth law of ice crystals

On the basis of analysis and study of the growth of ice crystals, the inadequacy and thus a necessity for improvement of the Kohayashi-Pruppacher model are discussed. Be experimenting with a new wedge-shaped chamber of ice thermal diffusion which provides a stable environment and a wide range of control, a great amount of quantitative data from three-dimensional size measurements have been obtained. A quantitative research method is established, yielding, for the first time, satisfactory quantitative results in the region of low ice supersaturation. These results show that the Kobayashi-Pruppacher inference is inade-quate, and reveal new characteristics of ice-crystal growth in the Wulff growth region, the region of abrupt change of crystal forms and that of low ice supersaturation.