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Title: Scaling of Turbulence and Microphysics in a Convection–Cloud Chamber of Varying Height
Abstract

The convection–cloud chamber enables measurement of aerosol and cloud microphysics, as well as their interactions, within a turbulent environment under steady‐state conditions. Increasing the size of a convection–cloud chamber, while holding the imposed temperature difference constant, leads to increased Rayleigh, Reynolds and Nusselt numbers. Large–eddy simulation coupled with a bin microphysics model allows the influence of increased velocity, time, and spatial scales on cloud microphysical properties to be explored. Simulations of a convection–cloud chamber, with fixed aspect ratio and increasing heights ofH = 1, 2, 4, and (for dry conditions only) 8 m are performed. The key findings are: Velocity fluctuations scale asH1/3, consistent with the Deardorff expression for convective velocity, and implying that the turbulence correlation time scales asH2/3. Temperature and other scalar fluctuations scale asH−3/7. Droplet size distributions from chambers of different sizes can be matched by adjusting the total aerosol injection rate as the horizontal cross‐sectional area (i.e., asH2for constant aspect ratio). Injection of aerosols at a point versus distributed throughout the volume makes no difference for polluted conditions, but can lead to cloud droplet size distribution broadening in clean conditions. Cloud droplet growth by collision and coalescence leads to a broader right tail of the distribution compared to condensation growth alone, and this tail increases in magnitude and extent monotonically as the increase of chamber height. These results also have implications for scaling within turbulent, cloudy mixed‐layers in the atmosphere, such as fog layers.

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Award ID(s):
2133229
NSF-PAR ID:
10396924
Author(s) / Creator(s):
 ;  ;  ;  ;  
Publisher / Repository:
DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
Volume:
15
Issue:
2
ISSN:
1942-2466
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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