Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6343548 | Atmospheric Research | 2014 | 17 Pages |
Abstract
Conversely, larger sensitivities of precipitation extremes were found to the treatment of drop breakup and the shape of the particle size distributions. Consistent with previous studies, domain-averaged and peak precipitation increased monotonically with increasing breakup equilibrium diameter Deq. Further, it is shown that a negative exponential size distribution results in excessive radar reflectivities for light rain rates. Surface precipitation and the joint distribution of reflectivity and rain rate are best reproduced by a 2-moment version of the scheme that applies gamma distributions with a diagnostic shape parameter for all particles and a large Deq. However, given the large sensitivities and uncertainties associated with collisional drop breakup and size sorting, it is likely that the full potential of improved physics in a 2-moment scheme will remain underexposed as long as these processes are not better understood.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Atmospheric Science
Authors
Kwinten Van Weverberg, Edouard Goudenhoofdt, Ulrich Blahak, Erwan Brisson, Matthias Demuzere, Philippe Marbaix, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele,