Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The nucleation process of water droplets/ice micro-crystals from water vapor reproduced in the CLOUD experiment and also directly observed in the Earth atmosphere do not only involve ions formation due to cosmic rays but also a range of complex chemical reactions with sulfuric acid, ammonia and organic compounds emitted in the air by human ...
the cloud IR emissivity, with values between 0 and 1, with a global average around 0.7; the effective cloud amount, the cloud amount weighted by the cloud IR emissivity, with a global average of 0.5; the cloud (visible) optical depth varies within a range of 4 and 10. the cloud water path for the liquid and solid (ice) phases of the cloud particles
Cloud droplets normally form on aerosol particles that serve as CCN. Increasing the number density of CCN can lead to formation of more cloud droplets with a smaller size. The increase in number density increases the optical depth of the cloud, which results in an increase in the cloud albedo making clouds appear whiter. Satellite imagery often ...
Cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), also known as cloud seeds, are small particles typically 0.2 μm, or one hundredth the size of a cloud droplet. [1] CCNs are a unique subset of aerosols in the atmosphere on which water vapour condenses. This can affect the radiative properties of clouds and the overall atmosphere. [2]
As a tropospheric cloud matures, the dense water droplets may combine to produce larger droplets. If the droplets become too large and heavy to be kept aloft by the air circulation, they will fall from the cloud as rain. By this process of accumulation, the space between droplets becomes increasingly larger, permitting light to penetrate ...
The droplet concentration of a cloud is the number of water droplets in a volume of cloud, typically a cubic centimeter (Wallace, 2006). The formula for the droplet concentration is as follows. = / In this equation, N is the total number of water droplets in the volume, and V is the total volume of the cloud being measured.
The shape of liquid water drops is generally spherical because of the effects of surface tension. Depending on the size of the drop the friction of the air flowing past a falling drop may squish the bottom on the drop so that it is slightly non-spherical. However, solid ice does not generally form into nice spherical shapes.
The cloud drop effective radius (alternatively cloud effective radius or simply effective radius when in context) is a weighted mean of the size distribution of cloud droplets. [1] The term was defined in 1974 by James E. Hansen and Larry Travis as the ratio of the third to the second moment of a droplet size distribution to aid in the ...