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How Wildfire Smoke Can Influence Snow Formation

Wildfire smoke can affect cloud droplets and ice formation, but a change in cloud precipitation does not necessarily mean more snow reaches the ground.

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Wildfire smoke can change how cloud droplets and ice form, but it does not reliably make more snow. The effect depends on the particles, cloud conditions, and weather—and changes to ice or precipitation inside a cloud do not necessarily mean more snow reaches the ground.

What “products of fire” means for clouds

In this context, the products of fire are smoke and other particles released by wildfires. Some airborne particles can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), providing surfaces on which water vapor condenses into cloud droplets. A smaller subset can act as ice-nucleating particles (INPs), helping ice crystals form in clouds.

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These are distinct processes: a particle that helps a droplet form does not necessarily help ice form. Nor are all smoke particles equally effective at nucleating ice. A review of ice-nucleating particles describes their importance to freezing, precipitation, and cloud radiative properties, while noting that their abundance and impacts remain difficult to constrain with observations and models: the review in Reviews of Geophysics.

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How cloud ice could become snowfall

  1. Particles enter a cloud. Wildfire emissions can be carried into clouds, where particles may influence droplet formation or, for some particles, ice nucleation.
  2. Ice forms in suitable conditions. Clouds can contain supercooled liquid water—water that remains liquid below 0°C. INPs can help ice crystals begin to form in such conditions.
  3. Ice crystals grow. Crystals can collect water vapor and supercooled droplets. If they grow large enough, they may fall as precipitation.
  4. Some precipitation may reach the ground as snow. Whether it survives its descent as snow depends on the cloud and the atmosphere below it, including temperature and weather conditions.

Each step matters. More ice in a cloud, or a change in precipitation higher in the atmosphere, is not by itself evidence of increased snowfall at the surface.

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What wildfire-smoke studies have found

Field observations show that some smoke plumes contain more ice-nucleating particles

Measurements in western U.S. wildfire smoke found higher INP concentrations in plumes than in background air outside them. The size of the enhancement varied with temperature and from one fire to another. In one sagebrush-and-aspen fire, researchers attributed some of the highest concentrations partly to uncombusted plant material lifted into the air—not simply to particles produced by combustion. The observations therefore do not support treating every smoke plume as having the same ice-forming effect. See the field study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

A 2025 global analysis reported changes in precipitation structure

A 2025 analysis in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science associated wildfire emissions with changes in cloud and precipitation properties. It described delayed rain formation at lower levels and enhanced precipitation at upper levels. Its reported estimates included a 0.0358 increase in global mean annual aerosol optical depth attributed to wildfire emissions and a 0.32°C decrease in mean annual global precipitation-top temperature. Both are estimates from that study’s analysis, not direct measurements of increased snowfall at the ground or universal values for all fires. The authors also noted that aerosol effects are difficult to separate from meteorology and other interacting processes. Read the study in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.

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Why smoke does not mean more snow

Cloud droplets, ice formation, precipitation aloft, and snowfall at the surface are related but different outcomes. Smoke may shift the balance between liquid droplets and ice or alter where and when precipitation forms. Whether that produces more snow, less snow, or a different distribution of precipitation depends on the particles, cloud type, temperature, and wider weather system.

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  • Particle properties matter: only some particles act as effective INPs, and observed plume concentrations varied among fires.
  • Cloud conditions matter: the presence of supercooled water and the cloud’s temperature structure affect ice formation and growth.
  • Weather matters: winds, cloud dynamics, and the atmosphere between the cloud and ground influence whether precipitation falls and what form it takes.
  • The measured outcome matters: a cloud-level or precipitation-top change is not the same as more snow accumulating at the surface.

For those reasons, the evidence supports a conditional influence on cloud processes, not a rule that wildfires increase snowfall or a basis for forecasting snow from smoke alone.

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How this differs from cloud seeding

Silver-iodide cloud seeding is an intentional intervention sometimes used to illustrate ice nucleation: a material is introduced to encourage ice formation under suitable cloud conditions. It is not a product of wildfire, and it should not be conflated with smoke emissions. One field study of orographic seeding documented a physical sequence from seeding through ice growth to snowfall, while cautioning that those observations alone did not establish the efficacy of seeding. See the field study in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.

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How to evaluate claims about fire and snow

  • Does the claim concern cloud-droplet formation (CCN) or ice nucleation (INPs)?
  • What temperatures and cloud conditions were present?
  • Is the evidence from laboratory work, field observations, or a model or global analysis?
  • Does the reported result describe ice in a cloud, precipitation aloft, or snow reaching the ground?
  • Did the study account for meteorology and cloud dynamics that may also affect precipitation?

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