Identification

Title

Giant sea-salt aerosols and warm rain formation in marine stratocumulus

Abstract

The concentrations and sizes of smaller aerosols (radius smaller than 0.5 µm) in the marine atmosphere vary owing to natural and anthropogenic factors. The concentrations and sizes of giant and ultragiant aerosols vary primarily due to wind-speed-dependent wave breaking. In climate models the formation of warm rain from marine stratocumulus clouds is usually parameterized based on the drops that form on the smaller aerosols. The present process study, using a stochastic Monte Carlo cloud model, shows that the variability of giant sea-salt aerosols and the variability of smaller aerosol cloud condensation nuclei are equally important in determining precipitation flux in marine stratocumulus. This strongly suggests that the effects of giant sea-salt aerosols should be included in the parameterization of warm rain formation in climate and other large-scale models. The above results are based on highly detailed calculations of droplet growth in an idealized marine stratocumulus cloud; the authors believe that other marine stratus cloud conditions may change the calculated rain rates but that the conclusions regarding the relative importance of small and giant aerosols are robust.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7dn45qd

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2008-12-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2008 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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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

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