An Example of Supercooled Drizzle Drops Formed through a Collision-Coalescence Process
- 1 December 1996
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
- Vol. 35 (12) , 2250-2260
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1996)035<2250:aeosdd>2.0.co;2
Abstract
The microphysics associated with observations of supercooled drizzle drops, which formed through a condensation and collision-coalescence process, are reported and discussed. The growth environment was an 1100-m-thick stratiform cloud with cloud-base and cloud-top temperatures of −7.5° and −12°C, respectively. The cloud was characterized by a low droplet concentration of 21 cm−3 and a large droplet median volume diameter of 29 µm, with a concentration of interstitial aerosol particles of less than 15 cm−3 (larger than 0. 13 µm in diameter). The evolution of drizzle drops was traced downward from cloud top, with a maximum diameter of 500 µm observed at cloud base. The air mass was sufficiently clean to ensure only a small number of active cloud condensation nuclei. Consequently, small concentrations of cloud droplets led to concentrations of over 300 L−1 for droplets larger than 40 µm, which set up strong conditions for continued growth by collision-coalescence. Ice crystals in concentrations of 0... Abstract The microphysics associated with observations of supercooled drizzle drops, which formed through a condensation and collision-coalescence process, are reported and discussed. The growth environment was an 1100-m-thick stratiform cloud with cloud-base and cloud-top temperatures of −7.5° and −12°C, respectively. The cloud was characterized by a low droplet concentration of 21 cm−3 and a large droplet median volume diameter of 29 µm, with a concentration of interstitial aerosol particles of less than 15 cm−3 (larger than 0. 13 µm in diameter). The evolution of drizzle drops was traced downward from cloud top, with a maximum diameter of 500 µm observed at cloud base. The air mass was sufficiently clean to ensure only a small number of active cloud condensation nuclei. Consequently, small concentrations of cloud droplets led to concentrations of over 300 L−1 for droplets larger than 40 µm, which set up strong conditions for continued growth by collision-coalescence. Ice crystals in concentrations of 0...Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: