Identification

Title

The influence of hygroscopic flare seeding on drop size distribution over Southeast Queensland

Abstract

This study presents measurements of the initial cloud-base droplet spectra of seeded and unseeded clouds observed during the Queensland Cloud Seeding Research Program field campaign. The measurements were stratified by the aerosol regime that the cloud formed within, and then analyzed statistically as well as compared to parcel model simulations. Initial droplet spectra were obtained within 300-600 m of cloud base to identify the spectra resulting from nucleation and to avoid effects from collision-coalescence broadening processes. The goal of this study is to assess the impact of hygroscopic flare seeding on cloud-droplet growth as a first step toward understanding the effect of hygroscopic seeding on rainfall. Results indicate that initial droplet spectra are altered by seeding, such that the mean diameter and tail of drops larger than 20 mu m increased in seeded clouds within a given aerosol regime. This effect is most pronounced in the continental-influenced aerosol regime, that generally lacked coarse mode aerosols, but was also observed to occur in the maritime-influenced regime. To further investigate if the observational results were supported by theory, a parcel model was used to improve the process-level understanding of the seeding impact on the initial evolution of the droplet spectra. The simulated results qualitatively agree with the observations that noted the seeding effect is more prominent in the continental-influenced regime.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7ft8qdj

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-03-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact