Discovering How Ice Crystals Grow Using Neural ODE's and Symbolic Regression

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lamb, Kara D., Harrington, Jerry Y., Moyle, Alfred M., Pokrifka, Gwenore F., Clouser, Benjamin W., Ebert, Volker, Möhler, Ottmar, Saathoff, Harald
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lamb, Kara D.
Harrington, Jerry Y.
Moyle, Alfred M.
Pokrifka, Gwenore F.
Clouser, Benjamin W.
Ebert, Volker
Möhler, Ottmar
Saathoff, Harald
author_facet Lamb, Kara D.
Harrington, Jerry Y.
Moyle, Alfred M.
Pokrifka, Gwenore F.
Clouser, Benjamin W.
Ebert, Volker
Möhler, Ottmar
Saathoff, Harald
contents Depositional ice growth is an important process for cirrus cloud evolution, but the physics of ice growth in atmospheric conditions is still poorly understood. One major challenge in constraining depositional ice growth models against observations is that the early growth rates of ice crystals cannot be directly observed, and proposed models require assumptions about the functional dependence of physical processes that are still highly uncertain. Neural ordinary differential equations (NODE's) are a recently developed machine learning method that can be used to learn the derivative of an unknown function. Here we use NODE's to learn the functional dependence of unknown physics in the depositional ice growth model by optimizing against experimental measurements of ice crystal mass. We find a functional form for the depositional ice growth model that best fits 290 mass time series of ice crystals grown in a levitation diffusion chamber. We use symbolic regression to derive an equation for the function learned by the NODE model, which includes additional terms proportional to ice crystal mass in the capacitance growth model. We evaluate this functional form against experimental data sets from the AIDA Aerosol and Cloud Chamber, finding that our new proposed model for depositional ice growth accurately reproduces experimental results in the early stages of ice crystal growth.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_17935
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovering How Ice Crystals Grow Using Neural ODE's and Symbolic Regression
Lamb, Kara D.
Harrington, Jerry Y.
Moyle, Alfred M.
Pokrifka, Gwenore F.
Clouser, Benjamin W.
Ebert, Volker
Möhler, Ottmar
Saathoff, Harald
Chemical Physics
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Depositional ice growth is an important process for cirrus cloud evolution, but the physics of ice growth in atmospheric conditions is still poorly understood. One major challenge in constraining depositional ice growth models against observations is that the early growth rates of ice crystals cannot be directly observed, and proposed models require assumptions about the functional dependence of physical processes that are still highly uncertain. Neural ordinary differential equations (NODE's) are a recently developed machine learning method that can be used to learn the derivative of an unknown function. Here we use NODE's to learn the functional dependence of unknown physics in the depositional ice growth model by optimizing against experimental measurements of ice crystal mass. We find a functional form for the depositional ice growth model that best fits 290 mass time series of ice crystals grown in a levitation diffusion chamber. We use symbolic regression to derive an equation for the function learned by the NODE model, which includes additional terms proportional to ice crystal mass in the capacitance growth model. We evaluate this functional form against experimental data sets from the AIDA Aerosol and Cloud Chamber, finding that our new proposed model for depositional ice growth accurately reproduces experimental results in the early stages of ice crystal growth.
title Discovering How Ice Crystals Grow Using Neural ODE's and Symbolic Regression
topic Chemical Physics
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17935