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Bin and bulk schemes are the two primary methods to parameterize cloud microphysical processes. This study attempts to reveal how their structural differences (size‐resolved vs. moment‐resolved) manifest in terms of cloud and precipitation properties. We use a bulk scheme, the Arbitrary Moment Predictor (AMP), which uses process parameterizations identical to those in a bin scheme but predicts only moments of the size distribution like a bulk scheme. As such, differences between simulations using AMP's bin scheme and simulations using AMP itself must come from their structural differences. In one‐dimensional kinematic simulations, the overall difference between AMP (bulk) and bin schemes is found to be small. Full‐microphysics AMP and bin simulations have similar mean liquid water path (mean percent difference <4%), but AMP simulates significantly lower mean precipitation rate (−35%) than the bin scheme due to slower precipitation onset. Individual processes are also tested. Condensation is represented almost perfectly with AMP, and only small AMP‐bin differences emerge due to nucleation, evaporation, and sedimentation. Collision‐coalescence is the single biggest reason for AMP‐bin divergence. Closer inspection shows that this divergence is primarily a result of autoconversion and not of accretion. In full microphysics simulations, lowering the diameter threshold separating cloud and rain category in AMP fromtoreduces the largest AMP‐bin difference to ∼10%, making the effect of structural differences between AMP (and perhaps triple‐moment bulk schemes generally) and bin even smaller than the parameterization differences between the two bin schemes.

Warm rain collision‐coalescence has been persistently difficult to parameterize in bulk microphysics schemes. We use a flexible bulk microphysics scheme with bin scheme process parameterizations, called AMP, to investigate reasons for the difficulty. AMP is configured in a variety of ways to mimic bulk schemes and is compared to simulations with the bin scheme upon which AMP is built. We find that an important limitation in traditional bulk schemes is the use of separate cloud and rain categories. When the drop size distribution is instead represented by a continuous distribution, the simulation of cloud‐to‐rain conversion is substantially improved. We also find large sensitivity to the threshold size to distinguish cloud and rain in traditional schemes; substantial improvement is found by decreasing the threshold from 40 to 25 μm. Neither the use of an assumed functional form for the size distribution nor the choice of predicted distribution moments has a large impact on the ability of AMP to simulate rain production. When predicting four total moments of the liquid drop size distribution, either with a traditional two‐category, two‐moment scheme with a reduced size threshold, or a four‐moment single‐category scheme, errors in the evolution of mass and the cloud size distribution are similar, but the single‐category scheme has a substantially better representation of the rain size distribution. Optimal moment combinations for the single‐category approach are investigated and appear to be linked more to the information content they provide for constraining the size distributions than to their correlation with collision‐coalescence rates.

Increases in aerosol concentration are well known to influence the microphysical processes and radiative properties of clouds. By reducing droplet size, an increase in aerosol can lessen collision efficiency and increase liquid water path (LWP) in precipitating clouds or enhance evaporation rate and decrease LWP in non‐precipitating clouds. We utilize large eddy simulations to further investigate these aerosol indirect effects in Arctic mixed‐phase clouds and find, in agreement with previous studies, precipitating clouds to experience an increase in LWP and non‐precipitating clouds a decrease in LWP. Most importantly however, our results reveal a different explanation for why such an LWP decrease occurs in decoupled, non‐precipitating clouds. We find enhanced evaporation near cloud top to be driven primarily by a strengthening of maximum radiative cooling rate with aerosol concentration which drives stronger entrainment, an effect that holds true even in clouds that are optically thick.