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New understanding and quantification of the regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interaction for studying aerosol indirect effects

Journal Article · · Geophysical Research Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL067683· OSTI ID:1245387
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States)
  2. Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States); Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  3. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
+ Show Author Affiliations
In this study, aerosol indirect effects suffer from large uncertainty in climate models and among observations. This study focuses on two plausible factors: regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interactions and the effect of cloud droplet spectral shape. We show, using a new parcel model, that combined consideration of droplet number concentration (Nc) and relative dispersion (ε, ratio of standard deviation to mean radius of the cloud droplet size distribution) better characterizes the regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interactions than considering Nc alone. Given updraft velocity (w), ε increases with increasing aerosol number concentration (Na) in the aerosol-limited regime, peaks in the transitional regime, and decreases with further increasing Na in the updraft-limited regime. This new finding further reconciles contrasting observations in literature and reinforces the compensating role of dispersion effect. The nonmonotonic behavior of ε further quantifies the relationship between the transitional Na and w that separates the aerosol- and updraft-limited regimes.
Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
OSTI ID:
1245387
Report Number(s):
BNL--111944-2016-JA; KP1703020
Journal Information:
Geophysical Research Letters, Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 43; ISSN 0094-8276
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (8)

Height Dependency of Aerosol-Cloud Interaction Regimes: Height Dependency of ACI Regime journal January 2018
Significant Underestimation in the Optically Based Estimation of the Aerosol First Indirect Effect Induced by the Aerosol Swelling Effect journal June 2018
Dispersion Aerosol Indirect Effect in Turbulent Clouds: Laboratory Measurements of Effective Radius journal October 2018
Search for Microphysical Signatures of Stochastic Condensation in Marine Boundary Layer Clouds Using Airborne Digital Holography journal March 2019
Distinct Impacts of Increased Aerosols on Cloud Droplet Number Concentration of Stratus/Stratocumulus and Cumulus journal November 2019
An Observational Study on Cloud Spectral Width in North China journal March 2019
Exploring aerosol–cloud interaction using VOCALS-REx aircraft measurements journal January 2019
Incorporation of inline warm rain diagnostics into the COSP2 satellite simulator for process-oriented model evaluation journal January 2019

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