Modeling the Contribution of Aerosols to Fog Evolution through Their Influence on Solar Radiation

Abstract

Aerosols and in particular their black carbon (BC) content influence the atmospheric heating rate and fog dissipation. Substantial improvements have been introduced to the solar scheme of the computational fluid dynamic model code_saturne to estimate fluxes and heating rates in the atmosphere. This solar scheme is applied to a well-documented case of a fog that evolves into a low stratus cloud. Different sensitivity tests are conducted. They show that aerosols have a major effect with an overestimation of the direct solar fluxes by 150 W m−2 when aerosols are not considered and a reduction of the heating of the layers. Aerosols lead to an increase of the heating rate by as much as 55% in the solar infrared (SIR) band and 100% in the Ultra-Violet visible (UV-vis) band. Taking into account the fraction of BC in cloud droplets also accentuates the heating in the layers at the top of the fog layer where water liquid content is maximum. When the BC fraction in cloud droplets is equal to 8.6 × 10−6, there is an increase of approximately 7.3 °C/day in the layers. Increasing the BC fraction leads to an increase of this heating in the layer, especially in the UV-vis band.