Author(s)

Peter W. Wilson^1,2*, Elizabeth Wilson-Park³, Abraham G. Wilson⁴

¹Department of Physics, The University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, USA.
²Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA.
³Philanthropy Australia, Sydney, Australia.
⁴The King’s Institute, The King’s School, Parramatta, Australia.

It has recently been shown that incident particles, neutrons, can initiate the freezing in a supercooled water volume. This new finding may have ramifications for the interpretation of both experimental data on the nucleation of laboratory samples of supercooled water and perhaps more importantly on the interpretation of ice nucleation involved in cloud physics. For example, if some fraction of the cloud nucleation previously attributed to dust, soot, or aerosols has been caused by cosmogenic neutrons, fresh consideration is required in the context of climate models. Moreover, as cosmogenic neutrons, most being muon-induced, have much greater flux at high latitudes, estimates of ice nucleates in these regions may be larger than required to accurately model cloud and condensation properties. This discrepancy has been pointed out in IPCC reports. Our paper discusses the connection between the new concept of neutrons nucleating supercooled water and the need for a new source of nucleation in high latitude clouds, ideally causing others to review current data, or to analyse future data with this idea in mind.

Climate Models, Ice Nucleation, Neutrons, Supercooling

Wilson, P.W., Wilson-Park, E. and Wilson, A.G. (2024) Nucleation of Supercooled Water by Neutrons: Latitude Dependence and Implications for Cloud Modelling. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 14, 221-232. doi: 10.4236/acs.2024.142014.