Journal Article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 113, iss. 50, pp. 14243-14248, 2016
Authors
Kamal Kant Chandrakar, Will Cantrell, Kelken Chang, David Ciochetto, Dennis Niedermeier, Mikhail Ovchinnikov, Raymond A. Shaw, Fan Yang
Abstract
Significance
Atmospheric aerosol concentration is linked to cloud brightness and lifetime through the modulation of precipitation. Generally speaking, larger cloud droplets and wider-droplet size distributions form precipitation more efficiently. We create steady-state clouds in the laboratory through a balance of constant aerosol injection and cloud-droplet removal due to settling. As aerosol concentration is decreased, the cloud-droplet mean diameter increases, as expected, but also the width of the size distribution increases sharply. Theory, simulations, and measurements point to greater supersaturation variability as the cause of this broadening in what can be considered a low aerosol/slow microphysics limit.
