Quantifying the dependence of drop  spectrum width on cloud drop number  concentration for cloud remote sensing

Lebsock, Matthew D.; Witte, Mikael

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14293-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14293-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14293-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

Research article

|

20 Nov 2023

Research article |

| 20 Nov 2023

Quantifying the dependence of drop spectrum width on cloud drop number concentration for cloud remote sensing

Matthew D. Lebsock and Mikael Witte

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14293-2023-supplement

Data sets

MASE cabin and cloud probe data [Data set]. In Geophysical Research Letters M. Witte https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1035928

Holographic Detector for Clouds (HOLODEC) LRT (1sps) binned particle count and concentration data - NetCDF format. Version 1.0 S. Glienke https://doi.org/10.26023/GWK8-B9GP-730N

POST: UC Santa Cruz 1-hz PDI Drop Size Spectra - netCDF format. Version 1.0 P. Chuang and D. Rossiter https://doi.org/10.26023/5CG9-4H2E-5W0E

VOCALS: CIRPAS Twin Otter Phased Doppler Interferometer Droplet Concentration. Version 1.0 P. Chuang and D. Rossiter https://doi.org/10.26023/1AP2-A3YT-ED0Y

Download

Article (5606 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

This paper evaluates measurements of cloud drop size distributions made from airplanes. We find that as the number of cloud drops increases the distribution of the cloud drop sizes narrows. The data are used to develop a simple equation that relates the drop number to the width of the drop sizes. We then use this equation to demonstrate that existing approaches to observe the drop number from satellites contain errors that can be corrected by including the new relationship.