Freezing Drizzle Formation in Stably Stratified Layer Clouds. Part II: The Role of Giant Nuclei and Aerosol Particle Size Distribution and Solubility

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates how the characteristics of aerosol particles (size distribution and solubility) as well as the presence of giant nuclei affect drizzle formation in stably stratified layer clouds. A new technique was developed to simulate the evolution of water drops from wet aerosol particles and implemented into a detailed microphysical model. The detailed microphysical model was incorporated into a one-dimensional parcel model and a two-dimensional version of the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research (PSU–NCAR) Mesoscale Model (MM5). Sensitivity experiments were performed with the parcel model using a constant updraft speed and with the two-dimensional model by simulating flow over a bell-shaped mountain. The results showed that 1) stably stratified clouds with weak updrafts (<10 cm s−1) can form drizzle relatively rapidly for maritime size distributions with any aerosol particle solubility, and for continental size distributions with highly insoluble particles due to the low number of activated cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) (<100 cm−3), 2) drizzle is suppressed in stably stratified clouds with weak updrafts (<10 cm s−1) for highly soluble urban and extreme urban size distributions, and 3) the presence of giant nuclei only has an effect on drizzle formation for the highly soluble continental aerosol size distributions.