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Lohmann et al. 2003
Lohmann, U., Zhang, J. and Pi, J. (2003). Sensitivity studies of the effect of increased aerosol concentrations and snow crystal shape on the snowfall rate in the Arctic. Journal of Geophysical Research 108: doi: 10.1029/2003JD003377. issn: 0148-0227.

The mesoscale model GESIMA is used to simulate microphysical properties of Arctic clouds and their effect on radiation. Different case studies during the FIRE ACE/SHEBA project show that GESIMA is able to simulate the cloud boundaries, ice and liquid water content, and effective radii in good agreement with observations. For two different aerosol scenarios, the simulation results show that the anthropogenic aerosol can alter microphysical properties of Arctic clouds, and consequently modify surface precipitation. Borys et al. <2000> proposed that anthropogenically induced decreases in cloud droplet size inhibit the riming process. On the contrary, we find that the accretion of snow crystals with cloud droplets is increased in the polluted cloud owing to its higher cloud droplet number concentration. Instead, the autoconversion rate of cloud droplets and accretion of drizzle by snow decreases caused by the shutdown of the collision-coalescence process in the polluted cloud. The amount of precipitation reaching the surface as snow depends crucially on the crystal shape. If aggregates are assumed, then a tenfold increase in aerosol concentration leads to an increase in accumulated snow by 40% after 7 hours of simulation whereas the snow amount decreases by 30% when planar crystals are assumed because of the larger accretion efficiency of snow crystals with cloud droplets in case of aggregates.

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Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801), Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Cloud physics and chemistry, Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Pollution--urban and regional, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Polar meteorology, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Precipitation
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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