Fig. 2: Aerosol-driven variations in cloud processes as functions of fine aerosol (FA) or coarse sea spray aerosol (CSA) concentrations under a fixed cloud temperature depth (CTD) of 1–2 K.
From: Fine and coarse aerosols control of cloud water by evaporation-precipitation dynamics
The upper panels show (a) re, b rainfall flux, and c evaporation rate as functions of FA concentrations under fixed CTD (1–2 K) and CSA (20–40 μg·m−3). The rain flux (rain rate averaged for the whole 1° × 1° grid) is derived from the observed re and LWP, according to the relationship shown in Fig. 1a in our previous paper27. The evaporation rate is calculated using parameterization from Pruppacher et al.41. The lower panels show re, rainfall flux, and evaporation rate (d–f) as functions of CSA concentrations under fixed CTD (1–2 K) and FA (0.5–0.8 μg·m−3). Lines represent average re, rainfall flux, and evaporation rate at 10 concentration bins for FA and CSA, corresponding to the 0–10%, 10–20%, …, and 90–100% quantiles. Line colors transition from blue to red, indicating increasing cloud-top humidity. N indicates the number of cases. For each line, a slope was calculated using linear regression to fit cloud property variations to aerosol variations across the aerosol bins. Vertical error bars represent standard errors. The dashed 14 μm line indicates the typical precipitation initiation effective radius.
