Preliminary evaluation of the effect of electro-coalescence with conducting sphere approximation on the formation of warm cumulus clouds using SCALE-SDM version 0.2.5–2.3.0
Ruyi Zhang,Limin Zhou,Shin-ichiro Shima,and Huawei Yang
Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China
Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Science and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS, Beijing, 100029, China
Solar activity weakly ionises Earth's atmosphere, charging cloud droplets. Electro-coalescence is when oppositely charged droplets stick together. We introduce an analytical expression of electro-coalescence probability and use it in a warm-cumulus-cloud simulation. Results show that charge cases increase rain and droplet size, with the new method outperforming older ones. The new method requires longer computation time, but its impact on rain justifies inclusion in meteorology models.
Solar activity weakly ionises Earth's atmosphere, charging cloud droplets. Electro-coalescence...