Journal Article

PreJuSER-1577

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Supersaturations, Microphysics and Nitric Acid Partitioning in a Cold Cirrus observed during CR-AVE 2006:An Observation-Modeling Intercomparison Study

Gensch, I.FZJ* ; Bunz, H. ; Baumgardner, D. ; Christensen, L. E. ; Fahey, D. W. ; Hermann, R. L. ; Lawson, P. ; Popp, P. ; Smith, J. B. ; Webster, C. R. ; Weinstock, E. M. ; Wilson, J. C. ; Peter, T. ; Krämer, M.FZJ*

2008
IOP Publ. Bristol

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/035003

Abstract: Supersaturations, microphysics and nitric acid partitioning in a very cold subvisible tropical cirrus cloud observed on 2 February 2006, during the field campaign CR-AVE, are studied by comparing a simulated set of possible cloud development scenarios with the in situ observations. The scenario that best matches the observations is a cirrus cloud forming by heterogeneous freezing of a small number of ice nuclei with subsequent unimpeded mass accommodation of water on ice. Variation of the freezing process, the accommodation coefficient or the amount of available water leads to simulated clouds that differ microphysically from the observed cloud in important respects. In particular, the simulations suggest that heterogeneous ice nucleation or another freezing mechanism producing only a low number of ice crystals could be an important process for cold cirrus cloud formation, possibly explaining the frequent observations of high supersaturations inside the cirrus cloud in this temperature regime.

Keyword(s): J ; cirrus clouds (auto) ; supersaturations (auto) ; nitric acid (auto)

Note: We thank the scientific team of CR-AVE for providing the data. ECMWF provided the meteorological operational analyses. We thank the CLaMS-team of ICG-1, and especially Rolf P Muller, Forschungszentrum Julich, for support and useful discussions. We gratefully acknowledge Peter Spichtinger, ETH Zurich, for fruitful discussions and suggestions. This work was partly supported by the EU within SCOUT-O3 and by the Swiss National Foundation (SNF). Work performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, was done under contract with NASA.

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Research Program(s):

1. Atmosphäre und Klima (P22)

Appears in the scientific report 2008

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