Why does it snow?

Snow is a natural phenomenon, and the water vapor in the air condenses and then falls to the ground again. Water is the foundation of all kinds of life on the earth, and its changes and movements have created our world today. On the earth, water is constantly circulating. The water in the ocean and on the ground is heated and evaporated into the sky. The water vapor moves to other places with the wind. When they encounter cold air, they form precipitation and return to the earth's surface. There are two kinds of precipitation: one is liquid precipitation, which is rain; The other is solid precipitation, which is snow or hail.

The precipitation that falls on the earth's surface in the form of solid in the atmosphere is called atmospheric solid precipitation. Snow is one of the most extensive, universal and main forms of atmospheric solid precipitation. There are many kinds of atmospheric solid precipitation, including beautiful snowflakes, hail that can cause great harm, and snow graupel and ice particles that we don't often see.

Due to the difference of meteorological conditions and growth environment in the sky, all kinds of atmospheric solid precipitation are caused. The names of these atmospheric solid precipitation vary from place to place, from person to person, varied and extremely inconsistent. For convenience, the International Ice and Snow Committee under the International Hydrological Association held a special international conference in 1949 on the basis of consulting experts from various countries, at which the proposal of "Concise Classification of Atmospheric Solid Precipitation" was adopted. This concise classification divides atmospheric solid precipitation into ten types: snowflake, star snowflake, columnar snowflake, needle snowflake, multi-branch snowflake, axial snowflake, irregular snowflake, graupel, ice particle and hail. The first seven kinds are collectively called snow. Why can't the last three be called snow? It turns out that there are two processes for gaseous water vapor to become solid water. One is that water vapor first becomes water, and then water condenses into ice crystals. Another is that water vapor directly becomes ice crystals without water. This process is called water condensation. Therefore, snow is solid precipitation formed by condensation of water vapor in the sky. (The diagram on the right shows ten kinds of atmospheric solid precipitation, from top to bottom: snow flakes, star-shaped snow flakes, columnar snow crystals, needle-shaped snow crystals, multi-branched snow crystals, axial snow crystals, irregular snow crystals, graupel, ice particles and hail).

Si Nuo's close relatives.

In summer, in mountainous areas, there are often many supercooled water droplets frozen around the crystal nucleus in the sky, forming a white and dim round particle. Meteorology calls this kind of thing graupel, and in many places it's called Michelle or snow graupel. Generally, the diameter of graupel is between 0.3 and 2.5 mm, which is brittle and easy to break. Polonium does not belong to the category of snow, but it is also a kind of atmospheric solid precipitation.

Ice particles and hail

In summer, in the northern plain, two other kinds of atmospheric solid precipitation are often encountered, namely ice particles and hail. Ice particles and hail are relatively large translucent ice beads formed by flowing water droplets freezing around condensation nuclei layer by layer. Meteorology, the particle size less than 5 mm is called ice particles, and the particle size greater than 5 mm is called hail. Hail brings great harm to agricultural production. According to records, the largest hail in the world is bigger than a fist, with a diameter of over 1 0cm and a weight of over1kg.

Frost and rime In addition to atmospheric solid precipitation, another kind of "ground growth type" solid precipitation often appears on the ground, which is frost, rime and rime.

Although these solid precipitation are not atmospheric solid precipitation, they are only formed by condensation, crystallization and freezing of surface water vapor. But these solid precipitation also have a great impact on human production activities. Everyone is familiar with frost, which often reduces agricultural production. In order to avoid freezing injury, people have worked hard. Rime and rime are not very friendly to human beings, and generally appear in high mountains. In supercooled weather, when tiny raindrops or fog drops hit the surface of a severely cooled object, rime and rime will be formed on it.

The intensity and scale of this solid precipitation are sometimes amazing. Often in a day or two, an ice shell more than one meter thick can gather on the windward side of the object, and the scenery is very magical, just like the artistic conception in fairy tales.

How do snowflakes form?

How does the water vapor in the air movement form snowfall in the sky? Is the temperature below zero enough? No, if water vapor wants to crystallize, two conditions must be met to form snowfall:

One condition is that water vapor is saturated. The maximum amount of water vapor that air can hold at a certain temperature is called saturated water vapor. The temperature at which air reaches saturation is called dew point. When saturated air is cooled to a temperature below the dew point, the excess water vapor in the air becomes water droplets or ice crystals. Because the saturated water vapor content of ice surface is lower than that of water surface, the water vapor saturation required for the growth of ice crystals is lower than that of water droplets. That is to say, water droplets can grow only when the relative humidity (relative humidity refers to the ratio of the actual vapor pressure in air to the saturated vapor pressure of air at the same temperature) is not less than 100%; As for ice crystals, they tend to grow when the relative humidity is less than 100%. For example, when the temperature is -20℃ and the relative humidity is only 80%, ice crystals can grow. The lower the temperature, the less humidity is needed for the growth of ice crystals. Therefore, in the high-altitude and low-temperature environment, ice crystals are more likely to be produced than water droplets.

Another condition is that there must be condensation nuclei in the air. Some people have done experiments, if there is no condensation nucleus, the water vapor in the air will only condense into water droplets if it is supersaturated to a relative humidity of more than 500%. But such a large supersaturation phenomenon will not exist in the natural atmosphere. So without condensation nuclei, it is difficult for us to see rain and snow on the earth. Condensation nuclei are tiny solid particles suspended in the air. The ideal condensation nuclei are those particles that absorb the most water. Such as sea salt, sulfuric acid, nitrogen and other chemicals. So we sometimes see clouds in the sky, but there is no snow. In this case, people often use artificial snowfall.

Non-condensing snowflakes in the sky

Snow falls from the sky. How can there be non-condensing snowflakes in the sky?

1in the winter of 773, a newspaper in Petersburg, Russia reported a very interesting news. According to news reports, at a dance, due to the large number of people and the burning of hundreds of candles, the ballroom was hot and stuffy, and the ladies and gentlemen in poor health almost fainted in front of the God of Joy. At this time, a young man jumped on the windowsill and smashed the glass with one punch. As a result, an unexpected miracle appeared in the ballroom. Beautiful snowflakes danced in the hall with the cold airflow outside the window and fell on the hair and hands of people who were dizzy with heat. Someone rushed out of the ballroom curiously to see if it was snowing outside. Surprisingly, the sky is dotted with stars and the crescent moon is as silver as water.

So, where did the snowflakes in the hall come from? This is really a puzzling question. Is anyone playing any magic tricks? But no matter how clever a magician is, he can't play with snowflakes in the hall.

Later, scientists solved the mystery. It turns out that the breath of many people in the ballroom is full of water vapor, and the burning of candles has scattered many condensation nuclei. When the cold air outside the window breaks through the window, it forces the saturated water vapor in the hall to condense and crystallize immediately and turn into snowflakes. So as long as it snows, it will snow in the house.

The basic shape of snowflakes

The scenery is beautiful when it snows, but scientists and artists appreciate the exquisite snowflake patterns. Glaciologists began to describe the shape of snowflakes in detail more than a hundred years ago.

Ding Duoer, the originator of western glaciology, described the snowflakes he saw on Luoza Peak in his classic glaciology works: "These snowflakes ... are all composed of small ice flowers, each of which has six petals, some of which release beautiful little lateral tongues like Su Hua, some are round, some are arrow-shaped, or zigzag, some are complete, and some are lattice-shaped, but they are not beyond.

In China, as early as 100 BC in the era of Emperor Wendi of the Western Han Dynasty, there was a poet named Han Ying who wrote a biography of Han Poetry, which clearly pointed out that "there are six snowflakes everywhere."

The basic shape of snowflakes is hexagonal, but there are almost no two identical snowflakes in nature, just as there are no two identical people on earth. Many scholars have observed thousands of snowflakes with microscopes. These studies finally show that it is impossible to form snowflakes with the same shape and size and partial symmetry in nature.

Among these observed snowflakes, even the regularly symmetrical snowflakes are deformed. Why do snowflakes deform? Because the water vapor content in the atmosphere around snowflakes can't be the same in all directions, as long as there is a slight difference, the side with more water vapor content always grows fast.

There are many collectors of snowflake patterns in the world. They collect all kinds of snowflake photos like stamp collectors. An American named Bentley took nearly 6,000 photos in his life. Soviet photographer Siger Mountain is also a photographer of snowflake photos. His charming works are often used as models of structural patterns by artists. Japanese Nakatani Yoshijiro and his colleagues worked hard for 20 years, shooting and studying thousands of snowflakes in the cold room of the laboratory of Hokkaido University in Japan and in the tent on the snowfield in northern Japan.

However, although snowflakes have various shapes, they remain unchanged, so scientists may classify them into the above seven shapes. Among these seven shapes, hexagonal snowflake and hexagonal prism snowflake are the most basic forms of snowflake, and the other five are only the development, transformation or combination of these two basic forms.