Observations of high droplet number concentrations in Southern Ocean boundary layer clouds

Cloud physics data collected during the NSF/NCAR High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER) Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) campaigns provide a snapshot of unusual wintertime microphysical conditions in the boundary layer over the Southern Ocean. On 29 June 2011, the HIAPER sampled the boundary layer in a region of pre-frontal warm air advection between 58 and 48° S to the south of Tasmania. Cloud droplet number concentrations were consistent with climatological values in the northernmost profiles but were exceptionally high for wintertime in the Southern Ocean at 100-200 cm⁻;³ in the southernmost profiles. Sub-micron (0.06  < D  25 ms⁻¹) were most likely responsible for production of sea spray aerosol which influenced the microphysical properties of the boundary layer clouds. The smaller size and higher number concentration of cloud droplets is inferred to increase the albedo of these clouds, and these conditions occur regularly, and are expected to increase in frequency, over windy parts of the Southern Ocean.

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Related Dataset #1 : HIPPO Merged 10-Second Meteorology, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Aerosol Data. Version 1.0

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Copyright 2016 Authors. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.


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Author Chubb, T.
Huang, Y.
Jensen, Jørgen B.
Campos, Teresa
Siems, S.
Manton, M.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2016-01-27T00:00:00
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-11T20:51:47.716927
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:18286
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Chubb, T., Huang, Y., Jensen, Jørgen B., Campos, Teresa, Siems, S., Manton, M.. (2016). Observations of high droplet number concentrations in Southern Ocean boundary layer clouds. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7df6sr0. Accessed 01 August 2025.

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