Nucleation modes and particle habits of cirrus particles in synoptic cirrus: results from SPARTICUS and MACPEX

 

Authors

Paul Lawson — SPEC, Inc.
Eric Jensen — NASA - Ames Research Center
Sara Lance — SUNY-Albany

Category

Field Campaigns

Description

In situ measurements from the Small Particles in Cirrus (SPARTICUS) and Midlatitude Airborne Cirrus Properties Experiment (MACPEX) airborne campaigns provide extensive data sets of midlatitude cirrus microphysical properties. Jensen et al. (2013) recently compared 2D-S airborne measurements of particle concentration with results from numerical simulations of the synoptically-forced cirrus cases. The cases are stratified into three temperature regimes (-68°C to -58°C, -58°C to -48°C, -48°C to -38°C), and the observations are compared with simulations. One-dimensional simulations with detailed treatments of cloud microphysical processes are driven by temperatures and vertical winds extracted from meteorological analyses. The computationally efficient modeling approach incorporates the key cirrus physical processes, such that thousands of cloud cases can be simulated and the model results can be statistically compared with observations. Cloud particle habits are automatically classified using cloud particle imager (CPI) data and summarized for each of the three temperature regimes. Implications regarding homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation are discussed.

Supporting URL

www.specinc.com