Correcting Transport Errors During Advection of Aerosol and Cloud Moment Sequences in Eulerian Models

The method of moments (MOM) provides a highly efficient approach to tracking particle populations, be they aerosols or cloud droplets. In the case of aerosols the method is a statistically based alternative to bin-sectional and modal approaches [Wright et al., 2000]. In the case of clouds, where moments are often the desired product of a simulation for comparisons with radar and satellite observations, the MOM can replace the bin-sectional method. Recent studies have begun looking at the inclusion of higher-order moments, beyond droplet mixing ratio, for improving the representation of cloud microphysics in models [Van Weverberg et al., 2011; Milbrandt and McTaggart-Cowan, 2010].