Document Type

Data

Publication Date

7-15-2022

Abstract

The file contains the data corresponding to the figures in the paper. Abstract for the paper: The convection-cloud chamber enables measurement of aerosol and cloud microphysics, as well as their interactions, within a turbulent environment under steady-state conditions. Increasing the size of a convection-cloud chamber, while holding the imposed temperature difference constant, leads to increased Rayleigh, Reynolds and Nusselt numbers. Large-eddy simulation coupled with a bin microphysics model allows the influence of increased velocity, time, and spatial scales on cloud microphysical properties to be explored. Simulations of a convection--cloud chamber, with fixed aspect ratio and increasing heights of H=1, 2, 4, and (for dry conditions only) 8 m are performed. The key findings are: Velocity fluctuations scale as H^{1/3}, consistent with the Deardorff expression for convective velocity, and implying that the turbulence correlation time scales as H^{2/3}. Temperature and other scalar fluctuations scale as H^{-3/7}. Droplet size distributions from chambers of different sizes can be matched by adjusting the total aerosol injection rate as the horizontal cross-sectional area (i.e., as H^2 for constant aspect ratio). Injection of aerosols at a point versus distributed throughout the volume makes no difference for polluted conditions, but can lead to cloud droplet size distribution broadening in clean conditions. Cloud droplet growth by collision and coalescence leads to a broader right tail of the distribution compared to condensation growth alone, and this tail increases in magnitude and extent monotonically as the increase of chamber height.

Comments

Paper in review at Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, submitted July 2022

Paper can be found on Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/all-datasets/36/

Additional Files
Readme.txt (1 kB)
Readme File
Download

Share

COinS