Air parcel random walk and droplet spectra broadening in clouds.
We study the effect of turbulent flow on the droplet growth in a cloud during the condensation phase. Using the air parcel model, we describe analytically how the size distribution of droplets evolves at the different stages of parcel movement. We show that turbulent random walk superimposed on an accelerated ascent of the parcel makes the relative width of droplet distribution to grow initially as t(1/2) and then decay as t(-3/2).
Turitsyn
K S
KS
Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. feturits@wicc.weizmann.ac.il