Monte Carlo simulations of two-component drop growth by stochastic coalescence

Abstract

Abstract. The evolution of two-dimensional drop distributions is simulated in this study using a Monte Carlo method.~The stochastic algorithm of Gillespie (1976) for chemical reactions in the formulation proposed by Laurenzi et al. (2002) was used to simulate the kinetic behavior of the drop population. Within this framework species are defined as droplets of specific size and aerosol composition. The performance of the algorithm was checked by comparing the numerical with the analytical solutions found by Lushnikov (1975). Very good agreement was observed between the Monte Carlo simulations and the analytical solution. Simulation results are presented for bi-variate constant and hydrodynamic kernels. The algorithm can be easily extended to incorporate various properties of clouds such as including several crystal habits, different types of soluble CCN, particle charging and drop breakup.