A Taxonomy of Snow Crystal Growth Behaviors: 1. Using c-axis Ice Needles as Seed Crystals

I describe a new approach to the classification of snow crystal morphologies that focuses on the most common growth behaviors that appear in normal air under conditions of constant applied temperature and water-vapor supersaturation. The resulting morphological structures are generally robust with respect to small environmental changes and thus should be especially amenable to computational modeling. Because spontaneous structure formation depends on initial conditions, the choice of seed crystal can be an important consideration, and I have found that slender c-axis ice needles provide an exceptionally good starting point for this series of investigations. A sharp needle tip exposes a single basal surface that often simplifies subsequent morphological development, and the absence of a nearby substrate allows for the exploration of a broad range of supersaturations with well-controlled boundary conditions. The overarching goal of this endeavor is to facilitate detailed quantitative comparisons between laboratory ice-growth experiments and corresponding computational models, which will should greatly improve our understanding of the ice/vapor molecular attachment kinetics as well as our ability to model diffusion-limited growth dynamics in the ice/vapor system. This specific case-study of water ice connects broadly to many areas in aqueous chemistry, cryobiology, and environmental science, while the physical principles of molecular attachment kinetics and diffusion-limited growth apply more generally to other systems in crystal growth and materials science.