Global variation of column droplet concentration in low-level clouds

Precipitation driving of droplet concentration variabilityin marine low clouds

[1] The concentration Nd of cloud droplets in marine low clouds is a primary determinant of their ability to reflect sunlight and modulates their ability to precipitate. Previous studies have focused upon aerosol source variability as the key driver of variability in Nd. Here, we use a highly simplified aerosol budget model to examine the impact of precipitation on Nd. This model considers: pre...

Precipitation driving of droplet concentration 1 variability in marine low clouds

Spatial variation of total column ozone on a global scale

The spatial dependence of total column ozone varies strongly with latitude, so that homogeneous models (invariant to all rotations) are clearly unsuitable. However, an assumption of axial symmetry, which means that the process model is invariant to rotations about the Earth’s axis, is much more plausible and considerably simplifies the modeling. Using TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) mea...

Global temperature stabilization via controlled albedo enhancement of low-level maritime clouds.

An assessment is made herein of the proposal that controlled global cooling sufficient to balance global warming resulting from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations might be achieved by seeding low-level, extensive maritime clouds with seawater particles that act as cloud condensation nuclei, thereby activating new droplets and increasing cloud albedo (and possibly longevity). This paper f...

Towards quantifying droplet clustering in clouds

Droplet positions in atmospheric clouds are random but possibly correlated on some scales. This ‘clustering’ must be quantiŽ ed in order to account for it in theories of cloud evolution and radiative transfer. Tools as varied as droplet concentratio n power spectrum, Fishing test, and fractal correlation analysis have been used to describe the small-scale nature of clouds, and it has been difŽ ...