Convective clouds: From aerosols filter to smoking machine.

Abstract:

A spectral bin microphysical model was used to trace the changes in aerosols distribution inside convective clouds.

It was found that convective clouds advect aerosols particles depending on the initial cloud base aerosols concentration.

Convective clouds with high aerosol concentration will advect them to the the upper layer of the clouds and into the anvil and make the upper level of the cloud more polluted than the environment while convective clouds with low aerosol concentration will show smaller aerosols concentration inside the cloud than the environment due to in-cloud nucleation and mixing processes.

This work is investigating the different regime of the process, the sources and reasons to the difference. The threshold between these two regimes will be shown and the changes of this threshold in different clouds will be investigate.