Search

In-situ measurements in convective clouds (up to the freezing level) over the Amazon basin show that smoke from deforestation fires prevents clouds from precipitating until they acquire a vertical development of at least 4 km, compared to only 1-2 km in clean clouds. The average cloud depth required for the onset of warm rain increased by similar to 350 m for each additional 100 cloud condensation nuclei per cm(3) at a super-saturation of 0.5% (CCN0.5%). In polluted clouds, the diameter of modal liquid water content grows much slower with cloud depth (at least by a factor of similar to 2), due to the large number of droplets that compete for available water and to the suppressed coalescence processes. Contrary to what other studies have suggested, we did not observe this effect to reach saturation at 3000 or more accumulation mode particles per cm(3). The CCN0.5% concentration was found to be a very good predictor for the cloud depth required for the onset of warm precipitation and other microphysical factors, leaving only a secondary role for the updraft velocities in determining the cloud drop size distributions. The effective radius of the cloud droplets (r(e)) was found to be a quite robust parameter for a given environment and cloud depth, showing only a small effect of partial droplet evaporation from the cloud's mixing with its drier environment. This supports one of the basic assumptions of satellite analysis of cloud microphysical processes: the ability to look at different cloud top heights in the same region and regard their r(e) as if they had been measured inside one well developed cloud. The dependence of r(e) on the adiabatic fraction decreased higher in the clouds, especially for cleaner conditions, and disappeared at r(e)>=similar to 10 mu m. We propose that droplet coalescence, which is at its peak when warm rain is formed in the cloud at r(e)=similar to 10 mu m, continues to be significant during the cloud's mixing with the entrained air, cance, authorCount :5

In this study, we look for anthropogenic aerosol effects in southern Scandinavia's clouds under the influence of moderate levels of pollution and relatively weak dynamic forcing. This was done by comparing surface aerosol measurements with convective cloud microphysical profiles produced from satellite image analyses. The results show that the clouds associated with the anthropogenic-affected air with high PM0.5, had to acquire a vertical development of similar to 3.5 km before forming precipitation-sized particles, compared to less than 1 km for the clouds associated with low PM0.5 air-masses. Additionally, a comparison of profiles with precipitation was done with regard to different potentially important parameters. For precipitating clouds the variability of the cloud thickness needed to produce the precipitation (Delta h(14)) is directly related to PM0.5 concentrations, even without considering atmospheric stability, the specific aerosol size distribution or the aerosols' chemical composition. Each additional 1 mu g m(-3) of PM0.5 was found to increase Delta h(14) by similar to 200-250 m. Our conclusion is that it is indeed possible to detect the effects of anthropogenic aerosol on the convective clouds in southern Scandinavia despite modest aerosol masses. It also emphasizes the importance of including aerosol processes in climate-radiation models and in numerical weather prediction models., authorCount :5