Adiabatic and radiative cooling are both  important causes of aerosol activation  in simulated fog events in Europe

Ghosh, Pratapaditya; Boutle, Ian; Field, Paul; Hill, Adrian; Mazoyer, Marie; Evans, Katherine J.; Mahajan, Salil; Kang, Hyun-Gyu; Xu, Min; Zhang, Wei; Gordon, Hamish

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-11157-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 18

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-11157-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-11157-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 18

Research article

|

24 Sep 2025

Research article |

| 24 Sep 2025

Adiabatic and radiative cooling are both important causes of aerosol activation in simulated fog events in Europe

Pratapaditya Ghosh, Ian Boutle, Paul Field, Adrian Hill, Marie Mazoyer, Katherine J. Evans, Salil Mahajan, Hyun-Gyu Kang, Min Xu, Wei Zhang, and Hamish Gordon

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-11157-2025-supplement

Data sets

Adiabatic and radiative cooling are both important causes of aerosol activation in simulated fog events in Europe Pratapaditya Ghosh et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15666154

Model code and software

metomi/rose: 2019.01.3 Matt Shin et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3800775

cylc/cylc-flow: cylc-7.8.8 Hilary James Oliver et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4638360

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Short summary

We study the life cycle of fog events in Europe using a weather and climate model. By incorporating droplet formation and growth driven by radiative cooling, our model better simulates the total liquid water in foggy atmospheric columns. We show that both adiabatic and radiative cooling play significant, often equally important, roles in driving droplet formation and growth. We discuss strategies to address droplet number overpredictions by improving model physics and addressing model artifacts.