Polluting of winter convective clouds upon transition from ocean inland over central California: contrasting case studies

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Author
Rosenfeld, Daniel
Chemke, Rei
Prather, Kimberly
Suski, Kaitlyn
Comstock, Jennifer M.
Schmid, Beat
Tomlinson, Jason
Jonsson, Haflidi
Date
2014Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In-situ aircraft measurements of aerosol chemical and cloud microphysical properties were
conducted during the CalWater campaign in February and March 2011 over the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and the coastal waters of central California. The main objective was to elucidate the
impacts of aerosol properties on clouds and precipitation forming processes. In order to accomplish this, we compared contrasting cases of clouds that ingested aerosols from different sources. The results showed that clouds containing pristine oceanic air had low cloud drop concentrations and started to develop rain 500 m above their base. This occurred both over the ocean and over the Sierra Nevada, mainly in the early morning when the radiatively cooled stable continental boundary layerwas decoupled fromthe cloud base. Supercooled rain dominated the precipitation that formed in growing convective clouds in the pristine air, up to the −21 °C isotherm level. A contrasting situation was documented in the afternoon over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, when the clouds ingested high pollution aerosol concentrations produced in the Central Valley. This led to slow growth of the cloud drop effective radius with height and suppressed and even prevented the initiation of warm rain while contributing to the development of ice hydrometeors in the form of graupel. Our results show that cloud condensation and ice nuclei were the limiting factors that controlled warm rain and ice processes, respectively,while the unpolluted clouds in the same air mass produced precipitation quite efficiently. These findings provide the motivation for deeper investigations into the nature of the aerosols seeding clouds.
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The article of record as published may be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2013.09.006
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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