A New Look Into the Treatment of Large Drops in Radiative Transfer

One of the weakest links in conventional cloud radiation models is the way a size distribution of cloud particles is mathematically handled: one averages measured drop concentrations over space, evaluates the extinction and scattering cross sections using the mean drop size distribution function and solves the radiative transfer equation with average characteristics. This technique assumes that all drop sizes are well represented in ary given interval along the direction of photon travel. But the concentration of large drops can be so law that this assumption is significantly violated. This is clearly seen if one examines of how the appearance of drops changes with the scale. In the poster we demonstrate the results of our analysis of FSSP data acquired during FIRE'87 and both FSSP and DC1 data from cloud IOP in Spring 2000. The analysis shows that, in general, the average number of drops observed in an interval along the direction of photon travel is proportional to the interval's length (or scale) powered to a drop scaling exponent. For small droplets the scaling exponent is equal to 1, as predicted by a conventional radiative transfer model. However, for large drops, the scaling exponent can fall distinctly below 1. Since the solution of radiative transfer equation depends on the drop scaling exponent, its deviation from unity can lead to a systematic bias in estimation of cloud radiative properties. We discuss the importance of the scaling exponent for the characteristics of the small-scale drop size variability for large and small droplets. Most of the existing cloud radiation models, however, are insensitive to this parameter.