Researchers say a single coal-fired power plant just outside Houston is acting like a regional cloud machine, sending a plume of storm-seeding particles over downtown and far beyond the city limits.
Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography traced cloud-forming aerosols back to the W.A. Parish Generating Station, a major coal facility southwest of Houston. Using aircraft measurements and ground sensors, they tracked the plant’s emissions over the city center and more than 110 kilometers downwind. The particles they found are roughly the same size as those associated with respiratory illness, which links the region’s storm behavior to familiar air-quality concerns.
According to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a paper published June 28 singles out the Parish plant as a disproportionately large source of cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN) for greater Houston. Lead author Greg Roberts and colleagues stitched together data from 24 research flights in May and June 2022, mobile ground aerosol platforms, and U.S. Department of Energy radar. As reported by UC San Diego Today, the work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
How Researchers Mapped the Plume
The observations were collected under the ESCAPE field campaign, which coordinated aircraft sampling with a network of ground stations across coastal Texas. Researchers flew a Convair CV-580 equipped with CCN counters and other instruments to sample clouds and updrafts in and around the Parish plume, as detailed in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres…