On the relationship between cloud water composition and cloud droplet number concentration

MacDonald, Alexander B.; Hossein Mardi, Ali; Dadashazar, Hossein; Azadi Aghdam, Mojtaba; Crosbie, Ewan; Jonsson, Haflidi H.; Flagan, Richard C.; Seinfeld, John H.; Sorooshian, Armin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7645-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7645-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7645-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 13

Research article

|

02 Jul 2020

Research article |

| 02 Jul 2020

On the relationship between cloud water composition and cloud droplet number concentration

Alexander B. MacDonald, Ali Hossein Mardi, Hossein Dadashazar, Mojtaba Azadi Aghdam, Ewan Crosbie, Haflidi H. Jonsson, Richard C. Flagan, John H. Seinfeld, and Armin Sorooshian

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7645-2020-supplement

Data sets

A multi-year data set on aerosol-cloud-precipitation-meteorology interactions for marine stratocumulus clouds Sorooshian, A., MacDonald, A. B., Dadashazar, H., Bates, K. H., Coggon, M. M., Craven, J. S., Crosbie, E., Edwards, E.-L., Hersey, S. P., Hodas, N., Lin, J. J., Hossein Mardi, A., Marty, A. N., Maudlin, L. C., Metcalf, A. R., Murphy, S. M., Padro, L. T., Prabhakar, G., Rissman, T. A., Schlosser, J., Shingler, T., Varutbangkul, V., Wang, Z., Woods, R. K., Chuang, P. Y., Nenes, A., Jonsson, H. H., Flagan, R. C. and Seinfeld, J. H https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5099983.v10

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Understanding how humans affect Earth's climate requires understanding of how particles in the air affect the number concentration of droplets in a cloud (N_d). We use the air-equivalent mass concentration of different chemical species contained in cloud water to predict Nd. In this study we found that the prediction of N_d is (1) best described by total sulfate; (2) improved when considering up to five species; and (3) dependent on factors like turbulence, smoke presence, and in-cloud height.