The crystal structure of ice under mesospheric conditions

Ice clouds form in the summer high latitude mesopause region, which is the coldest part of the Earth's atmosphere. At these very low temperatures (<150K) ice can exist in metastable forms, but the nature of these ices remains poorly understood. In this paper we show that ice which is grown at mesospherically relevant temperatures does not have a structure corresponding to the well-known hexagonal form or the metastable cubic form. Instead, the ice which forms under mesospheric conditions is a material in which cubic and hexagonal sequences of ice are randomly arranged to produce stacking disordered ice (ice Isd). The structure of this ice is in the trigonal crystal system, rather than the cubic or hexagonal systems, and is expected to produce crystals with aspect ratios consistent with lidar observations.