Development of aerosol activation in the double-moment Unified Model and evaluation with CLARIFY measurements

Gordon, Hamish; Field, Paul R.; Abel, Steven J.; Barrett, Paul; Bower, Keith; Crawford, Ian; Cui, Zhiqiang; Grosvenor, Daniel P.; Hill, Adrian A.; Taylor, Jonathan; Wilkinson, Jonathan; Wu, Huihui; Carslaw, Ken S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10997-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 18

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 10997–11024, 2020

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10997-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue: New observations and related modelling studies of the aerosol–cloud–climate...

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 10997–11024, 2020

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10997-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 18

Research article 25 Sep 2020

Research article | 25 Sep 2020

Development of aerosol activation in the double-moment Unified Model and evaluation with CLARIFY measurements

Hamish Gordon et al.

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10997-2020-supplement

Data sets

CLARIFY: in-situ airborne observations by the FAAM BAE-146 aircraft Met Office https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/38ab7089781a4560b067dd6c20af3769

Unified Model Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/modelling-systems/unified-model

Short summary

The Met Office's Unified Model is widely used both for weather forecasting and climate prediction. We present the first version of the model in which both aerosol and cloud particle mass and number concentrations are allowed to evolve separately and independently, which is important for studying how aerosols affect weather and climate. We test the model against aircraft observations near Ascension Island in the Atlantic, focusing on how aerosols can "activate" to become cloud droplets.