Aircraft cloud measurements during ACE-ENA
Poster PDF
Authors
Fan Mei — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jennifer M. Comstock — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jian Wang — Washington University in St. Louis
Michael Jensen — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Category
General topics – Clouds
Description
Aerosol and Cloud Experiments in Eastern North Atlantic (ACE-ENA) is designed to characterize the boundary-layer structure comprehensively, and associated vertical distributions and horizontal variabilities of low clouds and aerosol over the Azores. The ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) Gulfstream -1 (G-1) aircraft was deployed to ACE-ENA during two intensive observing periods (IOPs) in early summer of 2017 and winter of 2018. The size distribution of cloud droplets, drizzle, and raindrops are characterized using a combination of a Fast Cloud Droplet Probe (FCDP), Two-Dimensional Stereo probe (2D-S), and High-Volume Precipitation Spectrometer (HVPS), which covers the droplet size range from 2 microns to 2 cm. In this study, three cloud probes are compared in their over-lapped size ranges, and the best-estimated size distribution is determined for further studies of cloud microphysical structures. Based on the cloud classification, we examine the cloud droplet size distributions below the cloud, inside the cloud, and at the cloud top. The characteristics of the drop medium volume diameter and a liquid water content between the two IOPS will be compared.
