A PARTIAL FULFILMENT

FOR
THE REQUIREMENTS
IN
HYDROLOGY
Weather Basics
(Meteorology): Atmospheric waters

INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD PHYSICS: Nucleation, Growth and Distribution

Cloud physics is the study of the physical processes that lead to the formation, growth and precipitation
of atmospheric clouds. Clouds consist of microscopic droplets of liquid water (warm clouds), tiny crystals
of ice (cold clouds), or both (mixed phase clouds). Cloud droplets initially form by the condensation of
water vapor onto condensation nuclei when the super saturation of air exceeds a critical value according
to Köhler theory

Nucleation is a physical process in which a change of state — for example, liquid to solid — occurs in a
substance around certain focal points, known as nuclei. Common examples are the
condensation of water vapor into droplets in the atmosphere, the formation of ice crystals when water
freezes, and the appearance of gas bubbles in a liquid.
Nucleation Process

Homogeneous Process- occurs where no such contaminants are present, and is much less commonly
seen. This physical reaction is the basis for a variety of manufacturing processes and interesting natural
phenomena.
Often, once nucleation starts to occur, it shows an exponential growth curve. For example, once crystals
start to form in a solution, their surface area increases as they grow, attracting more molecules and
promoting the growth at an ever-increasing rate, until the solution stabilizes and no more crystals can
form. This explains why it takes time for a river to freeze over in the winter, but once the ice starts forming
in the body of the river, it usually covers the river very rapidly.
Heterogeneous Process- nucleation happens in cases where there are pre-existing nuclei present, such
as tiny dust particles suspended in a liquid or gas.

Growth
Atmospheric aerosol
- These particles are known as atmospheric aerosol and are composed of tiny solid or liquid particles
which have a small fall speed in air and therefore appear to be suspended in the atmosphere on short
timescales. The sources of these aerosols, and their concentrations within the atmosphere vary widely in
time and location, but without their presence in the atmosphere, clouds would never form. The size and
chemical constitution of these aerosols determines how readily water vapour will condense onto them and
we shall see later that certain types of aerosol are much more likely to lead to cloud formation than
others.

Aerosol sizes-
Having said that aerosol is composed of microscopic particles, there is actually a huge range of sizes of
aerosol in the atmosphere. The smallest particles are of the order of 10-10m (or 0.0001m) in radius and
the largest can have radii of several tens of microns. Particles larger than this will have appreciable fall
velocities and so are not classed as aerosols as they do not appear to be suspended in the atmosphere.
Aerosols are classified by size into three types;
Aitken nuclei are the smallest aerosols, with radii of less than 0.1m. They are also the most numerous
aerosols in the atmosphere.
Large aerosols have a radius of between 0.1 and 1m and are less numerous than Aitken nuclei
although they constitute a larger proportion of the total aerosol mass in the atmosphere due to their larger
size.
Finally, giant aerosols have a radius greater than 1m and are less numerous than large aerosols.
The actual concentrations of these three different sizes of aerosol vary greatly depending on the nature of
the air mass. Polluted urban air contains many more Aitken nuclei than maritime air, but the numbers of
giant aerosol vary very little between different air masses.
Cloud condensation nuclei or CCNs (also known as cloud seeds) are small particles typically 0.2 µm, or
1/100th the size of a cloud droplet on which water vapor condenses. Water requires a non-gaseous
surface to make the transition from a vapor to a liquid; this process is called condensation. In the
atmosphere, this surface presents itself as tiny solid or liquid particles called CCNs. When no CCNs are
present, water vapor can be super cooled at about -13°C (8°F) for 5-6 hours before droplets
spontaneously form (this is the basis of the cloud chamber for detecting subatomic particles)
Droplet Growth Process:
Diffusion and Collision-coalescence
In the discussion of aerosols and their sources at the beginning of this reading, we defined three
categories of aerosols. These categories grouped aerosols ranged less than 0.2 micrometers to more
than two micrometers in diameter. From the table below, a typical cloud condensation nucleus (CCN) is
about 0.2 micrometers in diameter, while a typical raindrop is about 2000 micrometers or 2 mm in
diameter. The increase in size from a CCN to a raindrop represents a growth of 10,000 times the initial
size of the CCN.

Average Diameter
Droplet or Nuclei
(micrometers)

Typical CCN 0.2

Typical Cloud Droplet 20

Large Cloud Droplet 100

Typical Raindrop 2000

There are two growth processes that any droplet that grows beyond about 20 micrometers in diameter will
experience: the diffusion process and the collision-coalescence process. We will briefly discuss each of
these next.

The Diffusion Process

The continued growth of a cloud droplet, once condensation has started, is initially governed by
the diffusion of the water vapor molecules toward the droplet. Diffusion is the process of molecules
moving from regions of higher concentrations to regions of lower concentrations. At the surface of a
droplet, water vapor is simultaneously condensing and evaporating. When the concentration of water
vapor molecules is higher some distance from the droplet than it is at the droplet surface, the water vapor
in the air diffuses toward the droplet, condenses onto the droplet, and the net effect is droplet growth.
Two phenomena which influence the growth that occurs by diffusion are the curvature effect and
the solution effect.
The Collision-Coalescence Process
A droplet may continue to grow by diffusion beyond 20 micrometers in diameter, however, once a droplet
attains this size, growth is slow and inefficient. Droplets this large begin to collide and coalesce with other
droplets as they fall through the cloud, meaning they will bump into and bond to one another and form
larger drops. Updrafts in a cloud can transport a droplet upward repeatedly allowing it many opportunities
to fall back down through the cloud and collide and coalesce with other droplets. Initially by diffusion, and
subsequently by collision and coalescence, tiny aerosol nuclei grow into large water droplets more than
10,000 times their initial size.
Curvature Effects
notice that for the droplet to be in equilibrium (evaporation off drop = condensation onto drop), the
environment must be supersaturated
also notice that the curvature effect is larger for smaller drops
this makes sense since smaller drops have more curvature that larger drop

When examining the relationship between a surface of water and the adjacent moist air, it is usual to
consider a plane (i.e. flat) water surface. An equilibrium state is reached between the surface and the air
when the number of water molecules leaving the surface (i.e. evaporating) is equal to the number
entering the surface from the atmosphere (i.e. condensing). The equilibrium state is reached when the air
is just saturated (RH = 100%). If the relative humidity is less than this, more molecules will evaporate than
condense and so the RH will increase until it reaches 100% again. If the humidity is greater than this, the
opposite will be the case.

The Kelvin effect

The greater the curvature of a droplet (and therefore the smaller the radius), the higher the
supersaturation required for it to remain in equilibrium. However, if the radius of the droplet should
increase (if for instance it collides and joins with another droplet), then the environment will be
supersaturated with respect to the droplet. This will initiate further condensation onto the droplet and it will
thus grow even bigger - a positive feedback. The radius of the drop will always remain larger than its
equilibrium radius and so it will continue to grow. This growth is known as the Kelvin effect which is an
unstable process since a small increase in the radius of the drop results in rapid growth. If the droplet
were to reduce in size for some reason, the Kelvin effect will mean that the environment is now
subsaturated with respect to the drop and so evaporation will occur resulting in a rapid dissipation of the
droplet.
Figure 1. The equilibrium curve for a water droplet
illustrating the Kelvin Effect. If a droplet on the curve is
displaced to the right of the curve it will grow rapidly.
Similarly, if a droplet is displaced to the left of the
curve, it will dissipate rapidly.

The Kelvin (curvature) effect

The equilibrium vapour pressure over a curved surface
of water is greater than that over a plane surface. This
can be explained in terms of surface tension or in
terms of molecular attraction. At a curved surface there
is a weaker net attraction holding water molecules in the liquid mass, since each molecule at the surface
is more exposed. Consequently more molecules escape into the vapour phase than over a plane surface
and so the vapour pressure exerted is greater. This pressure is given by:

 2 
es (r )  es () exp 
 rR  T 
 …(1)
 v L 
where e s() is the equilibrium vapour pressure over a plane surface of water,  is the surface tension, r
the radius of curvature, Rv the gas constant for water vapour and L the density of water.
As a droplet's size increases, the vapour pressure exerted decreases, and liquids with higher values of
surface tension (and therefore greater molecular attraction) show a proportionally greater increase in
vapour pressure over a curved surface. While e > e s(r), a droplet will grow by diffusion of water vapour,
i.e. condensation, whereas it will shrink by evaporation if e <e s(r). A critical radius, r c may be defined
for a given vapour pressure by writing e = e s(r) in equation (1).This defines the size of a droplet that
will remain in equilibrium for a given vapour pressure. Setting e/e s() = S, a measure of relative humidity:
2
rc 
Rv  L T ln S
Thus high supersaturations are required for very small droplets to remain stable. For S = 1.01 (i.e. 1%
supersaturation), r c = 0.121m at 00C, while for
spontaneous (homogeneous) nucleation S must be very large (~ 6 to 8) since chance aggregations of
water molecules form only tiny droplets.
The solute effect
Molecules of solute at the surface of a droplet reduce the number of escaping water molecules by
occupying sites on the water surface, thus lowering the vapour pressure. For a plane water surface, the
reduction in vapour pressure due to solute is given by:

e' n0 n
  1 (2)
es () n  n0 n0
where e' is the equilibrium vapour pressure over the solution, n 0 is the number of molecules of water and
n is the number of molecules of solute (n<<n 0). If the molecules are dissociated into ions, as is the case
with a salt, n must be multiplied by a factor, i, which represents the degree of ionic dissociation. i=
2 is considered appropriate for many calculations. Introducing a constant, b, equation (2) simplifies to
(Mason, 1971):
 es' (r ) b
 1 3
e s ( ) r
Combining this result with Kelvin's equation (1),

es' (r )  b
a
 1   exp r
e s ( )  r 3 
where: a = 2 / R vLT
Providing r is not too small, a good approximation to this equation for realistic values of a and b is:

es' (r ) a b
S  1  3 (3)
e s ( ) r r
The Köhler curve
To find the maximum value of S in equation (3), in other words the greatest value of equilibrium relative
humidity for a droplet of given solute concentration, dS/dr = 0, i.e. - a/r2 + 3b/r4 = 0. This gives:

3b
r* 
a
Substituting into the expression for relative humidity:

4a 3
S*  1 
27b

Drop size distributions

For steady rain, intensity R, at continental mid-latitudes, the Marshall-Palmer (1948) distribution is a
reasonable approximation (except a very small drop sizes – Fig.17):

Where N(D)dD is no. of drops size D to D+dD per unit vol; R is in mm hr-1
N ( D )  N 0 e  D
where the slope factor depends on rainfall rate :
( R )  41R 0.21
Intercept is given by :
N 0  0.08 cm  4
Break-up may account for the negative-exponential form, raindrops being limited in size to D ~ 3mm.

Ten Basic Cloud Types

HIGH CLOUDS
 Cirrus

Fig.17
Detached clouds in the form of white, delicate filaments, mostly
white patches or narrow bands. They may have a fibrous (hair-like)
and/or silky sheen appearance.
Cirrus clouds are always composed of ice crystals, and their
transparent character depends upon the degree of separation of
the crystals.
As a rule when these clouds cross the sun's disk they hardly
diminish its brightness. Before sunrise and after sunset, cirrus is
often colored bright yellow or red. These clouds are lit up long before other clouds and fade out much
later.

 Cirrostratus
1.1.1 Transparent, whitish veil clouds with a fibrous (hair-like) or
smooth appearance. A sheet of cirrostratus which is very extensive,
nearly always ends by covering the whole sky.
A milky veil of fog (or thin Stratus) is distinguished from a veil of
Cirrostratus of a similar appearance by the halo phenomena which the
sun or the moon nearly always produces in a layer of cirrostratus.
 Cirrocumulus
Thin, white patch, sheet, or layered of clouds without shading. They are
composed of very small elements in the form of more or less regularly
arranged grains or ripples.
In general Cirrocumulus represents a degraded state of cirrus and
cirrostratus both of which may change into it and is an uncommon
cloud. There will be a connection with cirrus or cirrostratus and will
show some characteristics of ice crystal clouds.

MID CLOUDS
  Altostratus

Gray or bluish cloud sheets or layers of striated or fibrous clouds that

totally or partially covers the sky. They are thin enough to regularly reveal
the sun as if seen through ground glass. Altostratus clouds do not produce
a halo phenomenon nor are the shadows of objects on the ground visible.
Sometime virga is seen hanging from Altostratus, and at times may even
reach the ground causing very light precipitation.
1.1.2
 Altocumulus

White and/or gray patch, sheet or layered clouds, generally composed of

laminae (plates), rounded masses or rolls. They may be partly fibrous or
diffuse.
When the edge or a thin semitransparent patch of altocumulus passes in
front of the sun or moon a corona appears. This colored ring has red on the
outside and blue inside and occurs within a few degrees of the sun or
moon.
The most common mid cloud, more than one layer of Altocumulus often appears at different levels at the
same time. Many times Altocumulus will appear with other cloud types.

 Nimbostratus

The continuous rain cloud. Resulting from thickening Altostratus, This is a

dark gray cloud layer diffused by falling rain or snow. It is thick enough
throughout to blot out the sun. The cloud base lowers into the low level of
clouds as precipitation continues.
Also, low, ragged clouds frequently occur beneath this cloud which
sometimes merges with its base.
1.1.3
1.1.4 LOW CLOUDS
 Cumulus
Detached, generally dense clouds and with sharp outlines that develop
vertically in the form of rising mounds, domes or towers with bulging
upper parts often resembling a cauliflower.
The sunlit parts of these clouds are mostly brilliant white while their bases
are relatively dark and horizontal. Over land cumulus develops on days of
clear skies, and is due diurnal convection; it appears in the morning,
grows, and then more or less dissolves again toward evening.

 Stratus

A generally gray cloud layer with a uniform base which may, if thick
enough, produce drizzle, ice prisms, or snow grains. When the sun is
visible through this cloud, its outline is clearly discernible.Often when a
layer of Stratus breaks up and dissipates blue sky is seen.
1.1.5
 Cumulonimbus

The thunderstorm cloud, this is a heavy and dense cloud in the form of a
mountain or huge tower. The upper portion is usually smoothed, fibrous or
striated and nearly always flattened in the shape of an anvil or vast plume.
Under the base of this cloud which is often very dark, there are often low
ragged clouds that may or may not merge with the base. They produce
precipitation, which sometimes is in the form of virga.
Cumulonimbus clouds also produce hail and tornadoes.

 Stratocumulus

Gray or whitish patch, sheet, or layered clouds which almost always

have dark tessellations (honeycomb appearance), rounded masses or
rolls. Except for virga they are non-fibrous and may or may not be
merged.
They also have regularly arranged small elements with an apparent
width of more than five degrees (three fingers - at arm's length).

References and further reading

Berry, E et al.1974 An analysis of cloud droplet growth by collection. J Atmos.Sci, 31, 1814-24 &
1825-31

Choularton, T et al 1998 A study of the effects of cloud processing of aerosol on the microphysics
of clouds. Q.J.R.Met.S. 124, 1377-1389

Fletcher, N 1962 The physics of rainclouds, Cambridge University Press.

Hobbs, P 1993 Aerosol-cloud-climate interactions Academic Press (Ed. P V Hobbs)

J.M. Wallace and P.V. Hobbs. Atmospheric science - an introductory survey. Chapter 4.

R.R. Rogers and M.K. Yau. A short course in cloud physics.

B.J. Mason. The physics of clouds and Clouds, rain and rainmaking.

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-nucleation.htm

Physics and Chemistry of Clouds, Dennis Lamb,Johannes Verlind