J A Martins and M A F Silva Dias 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 015002 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/1/015002
J A Martins1,4 and M A F Silva Dias2,3
Show affiliationsPart of Focus on Aerosol Precipitation
In this paper, the main microphysical characteristics of clouds developing in polluted and clean conditions in the biomass-burning season of the Amazon region are examined, with special attention to the spectral dispersion of the cloud droplet size distribution and its potential impact on climate modeling applications. The dispersion effect has been shown to alter the climate cooling predicted by the so-called Twomey effect. In biomass-burning polluted conditions, high concentrations of low dispersed cloud droplets are found. Clean conditions revealed an opposite situation. The liquid water content (0.43 ± 0.19 g m−3) is shown to be uncorrelated with the cloud drop number concentration, while the effective radius is found to be very much correlated with the relative dispersion of the size distribution (R2 = 0.81). The results suggest that an increase in cloud condensation nuclei concentration from biomass-burning aerosols may lead to an additional effect caused by a decrease in relative dispersion. Since the dry season in the Amazonian region is vapor limiting, the dispersion effect of cloud droplet size distributions could be substantially larger than in other polluted regions.
92.60.Nv Cloud physics; stratus and cumulus clouds
92.60.Jq Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation)
Issue 1 (January-March 2009)
Received 1 August 2008, accepted for publication 28 November 2008
Published 13 January 2009
J A Martins and M A F Silva Dias 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 015002
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