Supersaturation of Water Vapor in Clouds
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
15 DECEMBER 2003 KOROLEV AND MAZIN 2957 Supersaturation of Water Vapor in Clouds ALEXEI V. K OROLEV Sky Tech Research, Inc., Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada ILIA P. M AZIN Center for Earth and Space Research, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia (Manuscript received 18 October 2002, in ®nal form 26 June 2003) ABSTRACT A theoretical framework is developed to estimate the supersaturation in liquid, ice, and mixed-phase clouds. An equation describing supersaturation in mixed-phase clouds in general form is considered here. The solution for this equation is obtained for the case of quasi-steady approximation, that is, when particle sizes stay constant. It is shown that the supersaturation asymptotically approaches the quasi-steady supersaturation over time. This creates a basis for the estimation of the supersaturation in clouds from the quasi-steady supersaturation calcu- lations. The quasi-steady supersaturation is a function of the vertical velocity and size distributions of liquid and ice particles, which can be obtained from in situ measurements. It is shown that, in mixed-phase clouds, the evaporating droplets maintain the water vapor pressure close to saturation over water, which enables the analytical estimation of the time of glaciation of mixed-phase clouds. The limitations of the quasi-steady ap- proximation in clouds with different phase composition are considered here. The role of phase relaxation time, as well as the effect of the characteristic time and spatial scales of turbulent ¯uctuations, are also discussed. 1. Introduction centration and its average size (Squires 1952; Mazin 1966, 1968). Questions relating to the formation of su- The phase transition of water from vapor into liquid persaturation in clouds were discussed in great details or solid phase plays a pivotal role in the formation of by Kabanov et al. (1971). Rogers (1975) studied the clouds and precipitation. The direction and rate of the supersaturation equation for liquid clouds numerically phase transition ``liquid-to-vapor'' or ``ice-to-vapor'' and considered analytical solutions for some special cas- are determined by the vapor supersaturation with respect es. Subsequent re®nements of the supersaturation equa- to liquid or ice, respectively. The early numerical mod- tion and the time of phase relaxation were made by eling by Howell (1949) and Mordy (1959) has shown Korolev (1994). Most studies of the supersaturation are that the supersaturation in a uniformly ascending cloud related to liquid clouds. Only few works consider su- parcel reaches a maximum near the cloud base during persaturation in glaciated clouds (e.g., Juisto 1971; activation of droplets and then monotonically decreases. Heyms®eld 1975). Squires (1952) derived a relationship between supply The present paper is focused on a study of the super- and depletion of water vapor in a vertically moving saturation in clouds of any phase composition: mixed, cloud parcel. The solution of the Squires equation sug- liquid, and ice. In the section 2 we consider the equation gested that, to a ®rst approximation, the supersaturation for supersaturation in a general form for a three-phase is linearly related to a vertical velocity and inversely component system consisting of water vapor, liquid, and proportional to the concentration and the average size ice particles. Section 3 presents a solution of the super- of the cloud droplets. This relationship was later used saturation equation for the case of quasi-steady approx- to determine supersaturation in convective clouds by imation, that is, when the sizes of cloud particles stay Warner (1968), Paluch and Knight (1984), and Politov- constant. Sections 4 and 5 examine supersaturation in ich and Cooper (1988). The characteristic time of phase liquid, ice, and mixed-phase clouds. In section 6 the an- transition due to water vapor depletion by cloud droplets alytical solution for the glaciating time of mixed-phase is inversely proportional to the product of droplet con- clouds for zero vertical velocity is obtained. Section 7 justi®es the possibility of estimating the in-cloud super- saturation from the quasi-steady supersaturation, which Corresponding author address: Alexei V. Korolev, Sky Tech Re- search, Inc., 28 Don Head Village Blvd., Richmond Hill, ON L4C can be calculated from in situ measurements of particle 7M6, Canada. size distributions and vertical velocity. In section 8 the E-mail: [email protected] limiting conditions for the results are discussed. q 2003 American Meteorological Society 2958 JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES VOLUME 60 2. General equation dqw 5 BSNrww ww, (4) Consider a vertically moving adiabatic cloud parcel dt consisting of a mixture of liquid droplets and ice par- where Bw 5 4prwAw/ra and r w is the average radius of ticles uniformly distributed in space. Assume that the cloud droplets. cloud particles move with the air and stay inside the Similarly, an equation for changes in the mixing ratio parcel at all times and no activation of new cloud drop- of ice can be written as lets and nucleation of ice particles occur. Thus, the num- ber of droplets and ice particles per unit mass of the air dq 4pNdr1 rimax ` iif (r , , c) rdrd2 idc. stays constant. Another assumption is related to so 5 iir ir i ir i dt ra EE E dt called regular condensation; that is, the water vapor 0 rimin 0 pressure and temperature ®elds at large distance from (5) cloud particles are considered to be uniform, and all Here, Ni is the number concentration of ice particles; ri cloud particles grow or evaporate under the same con- is the characteristic size of ice particles; c is a shape ditions. factor of ice particles characterizing ``capacitance'' in The changes in the supersaturation in the cloud parcel the equation of the growth rate; ri is the density of ice can be described by an equation (appendix A): particles (rimin , ri , rimax); and f i(ri, ri, c)isthe distribution of ice particles by characteristic size, den- 1 dS gL g 1 Ldq2 ww52u 21 wwsity, and shape factor normalized to unity. The size of 22z Swp1 1 dt1212 cRTy RTa qy cRTp y dt an ice particle is an ambiguous parameter, and it can be de®ned in a number of different ways. The ice particle 1 LL dq size r is related to the shape factor c through the rate 21iw i. (1) i 2 of the mass growth. In the following consideration, the 12qcRTdty p y size ri will be de®ned as half the maximum dimension Here, Sw 5 (e 2 Ew)/Ew is the supersaturation with of the ice particle. For this de®nition of ri, the shape respect to water; e is the water vapor pressure; Ew(T) factor varies in the range 0 , c # 1, being equal to 1 is the saturated vapor pressure over liquid water at tem- for ice spheres. perature T; qy , qw, and qi are the mixing ratios of water Using Jeffery's electrostatic analogy, the diffusional vapor, liquid water, and ice, respectively (mass per 1 kg growth rate of the ice particles can be written as (e.g., of dry air); Ry and Ra are the speci®c gas constants of Pruppacher and Klett 1997) water vapor and air, respectively; cp is the speci®c heat capacitance of the air at constant pressure; L and L driii cA S w i 5 . (6) are the latent heat of water evaporation and ice subli- dt ri mation, respectively; g is the acceleration of gravity; uz 2 2 21 is the vertical velocity of the cloud parcel. Here, Ai 5 (riLi /kRy T 1 riRy T/EiD) ; Ei is the sat- The rate of changes in the liquid water mixing ratio urated water vapor pressure over a ¯at ice surface at due to condensation or evaporation of cloud droplets temperature T; Si is the supersaturation over ice. can be described as The supersaturation over ice can be related to the supersaturation over water with dq 4pr Ndr` www5 f (r )rdr2 w. (2) www w e 2 Ei dt ra E dt 0 Siw55jS 1 j 2 1, (7) Ei Here, f w(rw) is the size distribution of cloud droplets normalized to unity, rw is the droplet radius, Nw is the where j(T) 5 Ew(T)/Ei(T). Then, substituting Eqs. (6) number concentration of the cloud droplets, rw and ra and (7) into Eq. (5) and averaging over ri and c gives are the densities of liquid water and dry air, respectively. dq 4pANrc The mass transfer of water from vapor to liquid phase iiii5 (jS 1 j 2 1) , dt w r inside clouds is mainly related to droplets having rw . a 1 mm. For such droplets, the corrections for the droplet which for simplicity yields curvature and salinity can be disregarded, and the equa- tion for a droplet growth can be written as (e.g., Prup- dq i 5 (BS 1 B*)Nr (8) pacher and Klett 1997) dt iw i ii dr A S www5 . (3) if one assumes that c is the same for all ice particles dt rw and that 2 2 21 Here, Aw 5 (rwLw /kRy T 1 rwRy T/EwD) , D is the 4pr cjA 4pr c B 5 ii; B* 5 i(j 2 1)A . coef®cient of water vapor diffusion in the air, and k is iiirr the coef®cient of air heat conductivity. Substituting Eq. aa (3) into Eq. (2) and averaging over r results in Substituting Eqs. (4) and (8) in Eq. (1) yields 15 DECEMBER 2003 KOROLEV AND MAZIN 2959 1 dS Here, we denote a 5 g(LR /c R T 2 1)/R T; a 5 w au aB*Nr 0 a p y a 1 5 0 z 2 2 iii 1/q 1 L2 /c R T 2; a 5 1/q 1 L L /c R T 2.