What process involves supercooled drops evaporating while ice crystals do not, providing water vapor that assists in vapor deposition on ice?

The Bergeron Process is a critical concept in meteorology that explains the formation of precipitation in cold clouds. It describes how ice crystals and supercooled water droplets coexist in a cloud.

In this process, supercooled water droplets (which remain liquid below freezing temperatures) evaporate, providing water vapor to the surrounding air. This vapor then deposits onto ice crystals, causing them to grow larger. As the ice crystals increase in size through the collection of this vapor, they eventually become heavy enough to fall as precipitation, such as snow.

This process highlights the interaction between water in its different phases (liquid and solid) in the atmosphere and is particularly important in cold cloud dynamics. Other processes like condensation and evaporation focus more generally on changes of state without the specific dynamics of ice crystal growth, while riming refers specifically to the accumulation of supercooled droplets on ice, which is a different mechanism. Thus, the Bergeron Process is the correct answer as it encompasses both the evaporation of supercooled drops and the deposition of water vapor onto ice crystals.