Impact of parameterizations of ice particle charging based on rime accretion rate and effective water content on simulated with MésoNH thunderstorm charge distributions

•We test the effect of the way the separated charge is determined on cloud charging.•We use laboratory results of Takahashi (1978) and Saunders et al. (1991).•We simulate two idealized cloud cases with four parameterizations of charging.•The simulations are performed with MésoNH.

The effect of the parameterization of non-inductive charging based on effective water content (EW) or on rime accretion rate (RAR) on simulated cloud charge structure was tested by numerical simulations of two idealized cloud cases with the 3-D cloud model MésoNH. The tested parameterizations are based on two different sets of well known laboratory experiments, Saunders et al. (1991) and Takahashi (1978). The simulations show that there is no regular tendency in the impact of the manner the charge is determined (by means of EW or RAR) on the cloud charge structures. However, results show that the determination of the separated charge based on EW or on RAR affects more the cloud charging when Saunders et al. (1991) parameterizations are used. In these cases, the simulated cloud charge structures are positive dipole, while in cases when Takahashi (1978) parameterizations are used, the simulated cloud charge structures are negative dipole. The charge densities obtained with the rime accretion rate based parameterization of Saunders et al. (1991) laboratory results tend to be lower in comparison to the three other parameterizations.