AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Effect of Rain on the Evolution of Aerosol Concentration Distribution in the Atmosphere
BORIS KRASOVITOV, Tov Elperin, Andrew Fominykh, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Abstract Number: 231 Working Group: Aerosols, Clouds, and Climate
Abstract Concentration measurements of aerosols in the atmospheric boundary layer revealed vertical (altitudinal) dependence of the aerosol concentration. Scavenging of aerosols by rains contributes to the evolution of vertical distribution of aerosols. At the same time the existence of vertical gradients of the aerosols in the atmosphere affects the rate of aerosols scavenging by rain droplets. In the present study we suggest a model of scavenging of aerosol particles by rain in the atmosphere with the nonhomogeneous initial distribution of aerosols. It is showed that dynamics of below-cloud scavenging of aerosols is described by an explicit analytical expression. Using the developed model we calculated temporal evolution of vertical concentration distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere. Calculations were performed for different measured vertical aerosol profiles available in the literature. Also it is shown that for the homogeneous initial distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere the obtained analytical expression recovers the well-known exponential dependence of the aerosol concentration on time. It is demonstrated that aerosols are washed down by rain to a zero concentration whereby the aerosol concentration distributions are calculated for the different values of rain intensity. The developed model can be used for the analysis of scavenging of aerosols in the atmosphere by rain and for validating the advanced models for predicting scavenging of aerosols by rain.