Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2017 Jun 5;8:15707. doi: 10.1038/ncomms15707

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

Copyright © 2017, The Author(s)

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

PMC Copyright notice

(a) Disruption of flocculation (Floc−) reduces average snowflake settling velocity relative to settling without floc disruption (Floc+). Central lines show medians, boxes are inter-quartile ranges, and whiskers show the full range of settling velocities observed under each condition. (b) Images taken from representative settling videos, in which tracks show snowflake position across 20 frames (=1 s). Track colours correspond to relative velocity. It is noteworthy that only ∼ 5% of snowflake clusters are visible, so individual clusters need not be physically touching to belong to the same floc. (c) Path diagram illustrating structural equation model used to estimate the contributions of focal cluster size (diameter) and number of neighbouring clusters (grey) to the settling velocity of a focal cluster (violet). (d) The positive effect of neighbours on settling velocity is reduced when flocculation is disrupted. Shown are mean estimates for the contributions of snowflake cluster diameter and number of neighbouring snowflakes to settling in Floc+ and Floc− conditions; error bars denote 95% CI.