Physics of Precipitation – Proceedings of the Cloud Physics Conference, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, June 3–5, 1959 V5

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 5.

The Second Woods Hole Conference on Cloud Physics, June 3-5, 1959, was devoted to the subject Physics of Precipitation. This volume contains the papers which were presented during the sessions as well as the edited discussion remarks. Two antagonistic requirements exist which make a planning of a conference very difficult: (1) one has to be able to discuss the details of the subject matter and (2) one would like to understand the matter in a larger frame and in its general significance. In modern science and perhaps especially in cloud physics the details of the subject branch out widely into other fields in which the scale and movements of atoms and molecules form the principal size parameters, whereas the larger frame of cloud physics, which is mainly connected to meteorology, of necessity ends in patterns determined by the scale and movements of the world?]wide atmospheric circulation. In the past the large?]scale and macrophysical aspects of cloud physics had often been neglected on account of the emphasis which was put on microphysical processes of clouds, and in clouds and cloud particles. In the planning of this Conference, an effort was therefore made to do justice to macrophysics and to reconcile this range of 1016 orders of magnitude by illuminating the subject matter from three different vantage points: (1) from the scale of synoptic meteorology, (2) from the scale of clouds and cloud systems, and (3) from the scale of microphysics. In agreement with this planning three main sessions evolved: Morphology of Precipitation Clouds and Cloud Systems, Morphology of Precipitation and Precipitation Particles, and Fundamental Precipitation Processes.