Convective Ripening and Initiation of Rainfall

Abstract

This paper discusses the evolution of the droplet size distribution for a liquid-in-gas aerosol contained in a Rayleigh-Bénard cell. It introduces a non-collisional model for broadening the droplet size distribution, termed 'convective ripening'. The paper also considers the initiation of rainfall from ice-free cumulus clouds. It is argued that while collisional mechanisms cannot explain the production of rain from clouds with water droplet diameters of $20\mu \mathrm{m}$, the non-collisional convective ripening mechanism gives a much faster route to increasing the size of the small fraction of droplets that grow into raindrops.

arXiv comment6 pages, no figures

References in corpus (5)

• Large scale dynamics in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection
• Logarithmic temperature profiles in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection
• Cloud microphysical effects of turbulent mixing and entrainment
• Prevalence of the sling effect for enhancing collision rates in turbulent suspensions
• A test-tube model for rainfall

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Collisional Aggregation due to Turbulence
• Large deviations and rain showers