Download or read book The Relationship Between Aerosol and Drop Size Distributions in the Marine Atmosphere written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The characteristics of droplet size distributions near cloud base are initially determined by the aerosol particles that act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Through physical and chemical processes that determine the fraction of aerosol particles that act as CCN, these particles profoundly affect the microphysical structure of clouds and their tendency to form precipitation. This paper provides a parametric study of the condensational growth on aerosol distributions from typical measurements in the marine atmosphere, and answers the following questions with respect to this process. (1) How does the condensationally produced droplet spectrum vary with the initial aerosol size distribution, aerosol number loading, and the updraft velocity (2) What is the fraction of aerosol particles that act as CCN This information can be applied to the future study to parameterize the number concentration of cloud droplets in climate models. (3) How do the optical properties of the cloud change as a result of the production of different droplet size distributions 8 figs.