Effect of aerosol concentration and absorbing aerosol on the radiation fog life cycle

Abstract

Analogous to cloud formation, the formation and life cycle of fogs is largely influenced by aerosol particles. The objective of this work is to analyze how changes in aerosol properties affect the fog life cycle, with special emphasis on how droplet concentrations change with cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations and on the effect that absorbing black carbon (BC) particles have on fog dissipation. For our simulation case study, we chose a typical fall time radiation fog at mid-latitudes (45° north) in fairly highly polluted conditions. Our results show that CCN concentrations have a strong influence on the fog lifetime. This is because the immediate effect of CCN on cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNC) is enhanced through two positive feedback loops: (1) Higher CDNC leads to more radiative cooling at the fog top, which leads to even stronger activation and (2) if CDNC is higher, the average droplet size is smaller, which slows down droplet removal through sedimentation. The effect that radiation fogs have on solar surface irradiation is large – the daily mean can change by 50% if CCN concentrations are doubled or halved (considering a reference CCN mixing ratio of 800 #/mg). With the same changes in CCN, the total fog lifetime increases 160 min or decreases 65 min, respectively. Although BC has a noticeable effect on fog height and dissipation time, its relative effect compared to CCN is small, even if BC concentrations are high. The fog formation is very sensitive to initial meteorological conditions which may be altered considerably if fog was present the previous day. This effect was neglected here, and future simulations, which span several days, may thus be a valuable extension of this study.