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- Title
Observational Investigation of the Effect of Turbulence on Microphysics and Precipitation in Warm Marine Boundary Layer Clouds.
- Authors
Zhu, Zeen; Yang, Fan; Kollias, Pavlos; Luke, Edward
- Abstract
Turbulence is omnipresent in the marine boundary layer (MBL) and several mechanisms have been proposed regarding its role on MBL cloud microphysics. In particular, past modeling studies suggested that increasing turbulence broaden the droplet size distribution (DSD) and leads to precipitation initiation, this suggested relationship has not been evaluated yet using long‐term observations. Here, comprehensive retrievals from long‐term ground‐based observations are used to explore the impact of turbulence on microphysics and precipitation in drizzling MBL clouds. Our analysis supports that broader DSD and larger droplets are observed with strong turbulence, but interestingly, the precipitation is reduced instead of being enhanced. This suppression mechanism is mainly due to the entrainment and mixing process in which the entrained dry air evaporates cloud water. This study provides observational evidence to show the complex effect of turbulence on MBL cloud properties and implies the potential influence of turbulence on the clouds lifetime. Plain Language Summary: Turbulence plays an important role on the cloud microphysics and the precipitation formation processes. However, few observational studies have been conducted to investigate the turbulence‐microphysics interactions due to a lack of the long‐term collection of the cloud in situ and retrieval products. In this study, we develop a novel set of the retrieval products to investigate the effect of turbulence on marine boundary layer cloud microphysics and precipitation. Long‐term ground‐based observations confirm that strong turbulence leads to a broader droplet size distribution, which is consistent with previous modeling results. However, although large droplets are observed in clouds with strong turbulence, precipitation in those clouds is suppressed due to the turbulence‐induced entrainment and mixing process. The result from this study provides important observational perspective to improve the understanding of complex turbulence‐cloud interactions in drizzling marine boundary layer clouds. Key Points: A novel algorithm is proposed to retrieve the maximum droplet size observed in radar observational volumeDirect observational evidence of the droplet size distribution broadening and large drizzle droplet formation under strong turbulence environmentEntrainment mixing generated by strong turbulence leads to liquid water path and precipitation reduction in drizzling marine boundary layer clouds
- Subjects
MICROPHYSICS; TURBULENCE; LARGE eddy simulation models
- Publication
Geophysical Research Letters, 2023, Vol 50, Issue 10, p1
- ISSN
0094-8276
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2022GL102578