scholarly journals Long-resident droplets at the stratocumulus top

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 6563-6576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto de Lozar ◽  
Lukas Muessle
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Turbulence Models ◽  
Longwave Radiation ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Radiative Cooling ◽  
Stratocumulus Clouds

Abstract. Turbulence models predict low droplet-collision rates in stratocumulus clouds, which should imply a narrow droplet size distribution and little rain. Contrary to this expectation, rain is often observed in stratocumuli. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that some droplets can grow well above the average because small-scale turbulence allows them to reside at cloud top for a time longer than the convective-eddy time t*. Long-resident droplets can grow larger because condensation due to longwave radiative cooling, and collisions have more time to enhance droplet growth. We investigate the trajectories of 1 billion Lagrangian droplets in direct numerical simulations of a cloudy mixed-layer configuration that is based on observations from the flight 11 from the VERDI campaign. High resolution is employed to represent a well-developed turbulent state at cloud top. Only one-way coupling is considered. We observe that 70 % of the droplets spend less than 0.6t* at cloud top before leaving the cloud, while 15 % of the droplets remain at least 0.9t* at cloud top. In addition, 0.2 % of the droplets spend more than 2.5t* at cloud top and decouple from the large-scale convective eddies that brought them to the top, with the result that they become memoryless. Modeling collisions like a Poisson process leads to the conclusion that most rain droplets originate from those memoryless droplets. Furthermore, most long-resident droplets accumulate at the downdraft regions of the flow, which could be related to the closed-cell stratocumulus pattern. Finally, we see that condensation due to longwave radiative cooling considerably broadens the cloud-top droplet size distribution: 6.5 % of the droplets double their mass due to radiation in their time at cloud top. This simulated droplet size distribution matches the flight measurements, confirming that condensation due to longwave radiation can be an important mechanism for broadening the droplet size distribution in radiatively driven stratocumuli.

scholarly journals Long-resident droplets at the stratocumulus top

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto de Lozar ◽  
Lukas Muessle
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Turbulence Models ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Wave Radiation ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Radiative Cooling ◽  
Long Wave

Abstract. Turbulence models predict low droplet-collision rates in stratocumulus clouds, which should imply a narrow droplet-size distribution and little rain. Contrary to this expectation, rain is often observed in stratocumulus. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that some droplets can grow well above the average, because small-scale turbulence allows them to reside at cloud top for a time longer than the convective-eddy time t*. Long-resident droplets can grow larger because condensation due to long-wave radiative cooling and collisions have more time to enhance droplet growth. We investigate the trajectories of one billion Lagrangian droplets in direct numerical simulations of a cloudy mixed-layer configuration that is based on observations from the flight 11 from the VERDI campaign. High resolution is employed to represent a well-developed turbulent state at cloud top. Only one-way coupling is considered. We observe that 70% of the droplets spend less than 0.6t* at cloud top before leaving the cloud, while 15% of the droplets remain at least 0.9t* at cloud top. Besides, 0.2% of the droplets spend more than 2.5t* at cloud top and decouple from the large-scale convective eddies that brought them to the top, with the result that they become memoryless. Modeling collisions like a Poisson process leads to the conclusion that most rain droplets originate from those memoryless droplets. Furthermore, most long-resident droplets accumulate at the downdraft regions of the flow, which could be related to the closed-cell stratocumulus pattern. Finally, we see that condensation due to long-wave radiative cooling considerably broadens the cloud-top droplet-size distribution: 6.5% of the droplets double their mass due to radiation in their time at cloud top. This simulated droplet size distribution matches the flight measurements, confirming that condensation due to long-wave radiation can be an important mechanism for broadening the droplet-size-distribution in radiatively-driven stratocumulus.

Turbulence Effects of Collision Efficiency and Broadening of Droplet Size Distribution in Cumulus Clouds

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sisi Chen ◽  
M. K. Yau ◽  
Peter Bartello
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cumulus Clouds ◽  
Collision Efficiency ◽  
Cloud Droplets ◽  
R Ratio ◽  
Condensational Growth

This paper aims to investigate and quantify the turbulence effect on droplet collision efficiency and explore the broadening mechanism of the droplet size distribution (DSD) in cumulus clouds. The sophisticated model employed in this study individually traces droplet motions affected by gravity, droplet disturbance flows, and turbulence in a Lagrangian frame. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) techniques are implemented to resolve the small-scale turbulence. Collision statistics for cloud droplets of radii between 5 and 25 μm at five different turbulence dissipation rates (20–500 cm2 s−3) are computed and compared with pure-gravity cases. The results show that the turbulence enhancement of collision efficiency highly depends on the r ratio (defined as the radius ratio of collected and collector droplets r/ R) but is less sensitive to the size of the collector droplet investigated in this study. Particularly, the enhancement is strongest among comparable-sized collisions, indicating that turbulence can significantly broaden the narrow DSD resulting from condensational growth. Finally, DNS experiments of droplet growth by collision–coalescence in turbulence are performed for the first time in the literature to further illustrate this hypothesis and to monitor the appearance of drizzle in the early rain-formation stage. By comparing the resulting DSDs at different turbulence intensities, it is found that broadening is most pronounced when turbulence is strongest and similar-sized collisions account for 21%–24% of total collisions in turbulent cases compared with only 9% in the gravitational case.

scholarly journals Aerosol indirect effect from turbulence-induced broadening of cloud-droplet size distributions

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (50) ◽  
pp. 14243-14248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamal Kant Chandrakar ◽  
Will Cantrell ◽  
Kelken Chang ◽  
David Ciochetto ◽  
Dennis Niedermeier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Cloud Droplet ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Aerosol Concentration ◽  
Droplet Radius ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Moist Convection ◽  
Concentration Changes ◽  
Precipitation Formation

The influence of aerosol concentration on the cloud-droplet size distribution is investigated in a laboratory chamber that enables turbulent cloud formation through moist convection. The experiments allow steady-state microphysics to be achieved, with aerosol input balanced by cloud-droplet growth and fallout. As aerosol concentration is increased, the cloud-droplet mean diameter decreases, as expected, but the width of the size distribution also decreases sharply. The aerosol input allows for cloud generation in the limiting regimes of fast microphysics (τc<τt) for high aerosol concentration, and slow microphysics (τc>τt) for low aerosol concentration; here, τc is the phase-relaxation time and τt is the turbulence-correlation time. The increase in the width of the droplet size distribution for the low aerosol limit is consistent with larger variability of supersaturation due to the slow microphysical response. A stochastic differential equation for supersaturation predicts that the standard deviation of the squared droplet radius should increase linearly with a system time scale defined as τs−1=τc−1+τt−1, and the measurements are in excellent agreement with this finding. The result underscores the importance of droplet size dispersion for aerosol indirect effects: increasing aerosol concentration changes the albedo and suppresses precipitation formation not only through reduction of the mean droplet diameter but also by narrowing of the droplet size distribution due to reduced supersaturation fluctuations. Supersaturation fluctuations in the low aerosol/slow microphysics limit are likely of leading importance for precipitation formation.

Broadening of the Cloud Droplet Size Distribution due to Thermal Radiative Cooling: Turbulent Parcel Simulations

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 1993-2010
Author(s):  
Mares Barekzai ◽  
Bernhard Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Radiation ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Cloud Droplet ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Growth Efficiency ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Radiative Cooling ◽  
Radiative Effect ◽  
Diffusional Growth ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Despite impressive advances in rain forecasts over the past decades, our understanding of rain formation on a microphysical scale is still poor. Droplet growth initially occurs through diffusion and, for sufficiently large radii, through the collision of droplets. However, there is no consensus on the mechanism to bridge the condensation coalescence bottleneck. We extend the analysis of prior methods by including radiatively enhanced diffusional growth (RAD) to a Markovian turbulence parameterization. This addition increases the diffusional growth efficiency by allowing for emission and absorption of thermal radiation. Specifically, we quantify an upper estimate for the radiative effect by focusing on droplets close to the cloud boundary. The strength of this simple model is that it determines growth-rate dependencies on a number of parameters, like updraft speed and the radiative effect, in a deterministic way. Realistic calculations with a cloud-resolving model are sensitive to parameter changes, which may cause completely different cloud realizations and thus it requires considerable computational power to obtain statistically significant results. The simulations suggest that the addition of radiative cooling can lead to a doubling of the droplet size standard deviation. However, the magnitude of the increase depends strongly on the broadening established by turbulence, due to an increase in the maximum droplet size, which accelerates the production of drizzle. Furthermore, the broadening caused by the combination of turbulence and thermal radiation is largest for small updrafts and the impact of radiation increases with time until it becomes dominant for slow synoptic updrafts.

scholarly journals Influence of Microphysical Variability on Stochastic Condensation in a Turbulent Laboratory Cloud

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Desai ◽  
K. K. Chandrakar ◽  
K. Chang ◽  
W. Cantrell ◽  
R. A. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Relaxation Time ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Number Concentration ◽  
Droplet Growth ◽  
Diffusional Growth ◽  
Phase Relaxation ◽  
Distribution Width ◽  
Phase Relaxation Time

Diffusional growth of droplets by stochastic condensation and a resulting broadening of the size distribution has been considered as a mechanism for bridging the cloud droplet growth gap between condensation and collision–coalescence. Recent studies have shown that supersaturation fluctuations can lead to a broadening of the droplet size distribution at the condensational stage of droplet growth. However, most studies using stochastic models assume the phase relaxation time of a cloud parcel to be constant. In this paper, two questions are asked: how variability in droplet number concentration and radius influence the phase relaxation time and what effect it has on the droplet size distributions. To answer these questions, steady-state cloud conditions are created in the laboratory and digital inline holography is used to directly observe the variations in local number concentration and droplet size distribution and, thereby, the integral radius. Stochastic equations are also extended to account for fluctuations in integral radius and obtain new terms that are compared with the laboratory observations. It is found that the variability in integral radius is primarily driven by variations in the droplet number concentration and not the droplet radius. This variability does not contribute significantly to the mean droplet growth rate but does contribute significantly to the rate of increase of the size distribution width.

Cloud Droplet Size Distributions from Observations of Glory and Cloudbow during the EUREC4A Campaign

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronika Pörtge ◽  
Tobias Kölling ◽  
Tobias Zinner ◽  
Linda Forster ◽  
Bernhard Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Cloud Droplet ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Cloud Microphysics ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Remote Sensing Technique ◽  
Cloud Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Cloud Radiative Effect ◽  
Spherical Droplets

&lt;p&gt;The cloud droplet size distribution determines the evolution of clouds and their impact on weather and climate. First, droplet size determines&lt;br&gt;the cloud radiative effect. Second, evolution of clouds and formation of precipitation are determined by droplet size and the shape of the size distribution. Therefore, measurements of the size distribution are important to further our understanding of clouds and their role in the earth system. We present a remote sensing technique for droplet size and width of the size distribution based on polarized observations of the glory and the cloudbow.&lt;br&gt;Glory and cloudbow are caused by backscattering of sunlight by spherical droplets in liquid clouds. This backscattering results in colorful concentric rings surrounding the observer&amp;#8217;s shadow; the formation is described quantitatively by Mie theory. The rings of the glory appear in an angular range of 170&amp;#176; &amp;#8211; 180&amp;#176; scattering angle and the larger cloudbow rings in a range of about 130&amp;#176; &amp;#8211; 160&amp;#176; . The angular radius of the rings is the most accurate and direct measure of the droplet size at cloud edge. In addition, the sharpness of the rings conveys information about the width of the droplet size distribution. The visibility of glory and cloudbow is significantly enhanced by the use of polarized observations which reduce the contribution of multiple scattering.&lt;br&gt;The specMACS sensor of LMU Munich has been upgraded recently by a polarization-sensitive wide-angle imager which was operated for the first time on the HALO aircraft during the EUREC4A campaign. The newly installed sensor offers a high spatial and temporal resolution, allowing to study small-scale variability of cloud microphysics at cloud top with a resolution of about 20 m. specMACS measurements and first retrieval results using the glory-cloudbow technique are presented.&lt;/p&gt;

Lagrangian Droplet Dynamics in the Subsiding Shell of a Cloud Using Direct Numerical Simulations

2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (10) ◽  
pp. 4015-4028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent E. Perrin ◽  
Harmen J. J. Jonker
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Evaporative Cooling ◽  
Mixing Layer ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cumulus Clouds ◽  
Droplet Dynamics ◽  
Turbulent Dissipation ◽  
Environmental Air

Abstract This study investigates the droplet dynamics at the lateral cloud–environment interface in shallow cumulus clouds. A mixing layer is used to study a small part of the cloud edge using direct numerical simulation combined with a Lagrangian particle tracking and collision algorithm. The effect of evaporation, gravity, coalescence, and the initial droplet size distribution on the intensity of the mixing layer and the evolution of the droplet size distribution is studied. Mixing of the droplets with environmental air induces evaporative cooling, which results in a very characteristic subsiding shell. As a consequence, stronger horizontal velocity gradients are found in the mixing layer, which induces more mixing and evaporation. A broadening of the droplet size distribution is observed as a result of evaporation and coalescence. Gravity acting on the droplets allows droplets in cloudy filaments detrained from the cloud to sediment and remain longer in the unsaturated environment. While this effect of gravity did not have a significant impact in this case on the mean evolution of the mixing layer, it does contribute to the broadening of the droplet size distribution and thereby significantly increases the collision rate. Although more but smaller droplets result in more evaporative cooling, more droplets also increase small-scale fluctuations and the production of turbulent dissipation. For the smallest droplets considered with a radius of 10 μm, the authors found that, although a more pronounced buoyancy dip was present, the increase in dissipation rate actually led to a decrease in the turbulent intensity of the mixing layer. Extrapolation of the results to realistic clouds is discussed.

scholarly journals Effect of Inlet Tangential Port Area on the Performance of Small – Scale Simplex Atomizer

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selvan G. Muthu ◽  
H. S. Muralidhara ◽  
Vinod Kumar Vyas ◽  
Kanth T. P. Dinesh ◽  
S. Kumaran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Droplet Size ◽  
Cone Angle ◽  
Droplet Size Distribution ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Sauter Mean Diameter ◽  
Spray Cone Angle ◽  
Spray Cone ◽  
Mean Diameter ◽  
Coefficient Of Discharge

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effects of increased area of inlet tangential ports on the performance of small scale simplex atomizer. The spray characteristics of three different simplex atomizer representing increasing area of inlet tangential ports are examined using water as a working fluid. Measurements of coefficient of discharge, spray cone angle, Sauter mean diameter and droplet size distribution were carried out over wide range of injection pressure. Coriolis mass flow meter was used to measure coefficient of discharge. Spray cone angle was measured by image processing technique. Sauter mean diameter and droplet size distributions were measured by Malvern droplet sizing instrument. It was observed that with increase in area of inlet tangential ports the size of air core produced along the center line reduced, which increases the coefficient of discharge. Spray cone angle decreases with increase in area of inlet tangential ports. It was found that increase in area of inlet tangential ports reduces swirl strength inside swirl chamber, which results in increasing Sauter mean diameter. Better droplet size distribution was observed for lower area of inlet tangential port configuration. The obtained experimental results were compared with experimental correlations available in literatures. Deviations in the obtained experimental results and experimental correlations was observed. This is due to difference in the size of atomizer used and difference in experimental techniques used between the present work and other investigations.

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