Outside-In: Clearing up how cloud droplets freeze

A fresh look at old experimental data is threatening to overturn a longstanding theory about how water droplets freeze within clouds.

SKY LIGHTS. The ratio of ice particles to liquid droplets in a cloud affects how often the cloud spawns lightning and how much precipitation the cloud yields.

Suspended water droplets can remain liquid even when they and the air that surrounds them have temperatures far below the normal freezing point, says Azadeh Tabazadeh, an atmospheric chemist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.