Lecture DS1

Condensation of water as
droplets in the atmosphere:

How do clouds form?

David Stevenson, Crew 314, dstevens@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

Ahrens ‘Meteorology Today’
9th Ed.

Chapter 5
p 113 ‘Condensation nuclei’

Chapter 7
p166-168 ‘Precipitation
processes’

For more details of the physics, see

Wallace & Hobbs, Chapter 6
 z

What happens
at the lifting
condensation level?
Lifting
condensation
level How does saturated
water vapour
convert to liquid
water droplets?
T

Lift an ‘air parcel’ from the surface

- initially cools at the ‘dry adiabatic lapse rate’ (red line)
- reaches the ‘lifting condensation level’
- then cools at the ‘saturated adiabatic lapse rate’ (blue line)
How do water droplets form?
Two theoretical routes:
1. Homogenous nucleation
• Pure water drops form (overcome surface
tension effects) and then grow by further
condensation
2. Heterogeneous nucleation
• Water condenses on existing particles
(aerosols – e.g. sea-salt, other chemical
compounds, both natural and man-made),
which then grow
Which route is correct? (or both/neither?)
 Homogeneous Nucleation

Chance collisions of Embryonic water

H2O molecules – droplet – large
more likely as vapour enough to remain
pressure increases intact

1. When a droplet forms, latent heat of condensation is released.

2. However, energy is required to overcome the surface tension needed
to hold a drop together.
If energy from (1) > (2) then drop forms & grows; if (2) > (1) drop shrinks
Condensation in the atmosphere
Saturation or more properly,
equilibrium, vapour pressure is
established when the number of water
vapour molecules entering and leaving
a water surface is about the same.

We defined this in terms of a plane water surface.

SVP is different over a

curved water surface since
it is easier for molecules to
leave the water drop since
there are fewer H bonds
binding them to each other.
 More like a plane surface

Easier for molecules to

escape to vapour phase,
i.e. harder to form smaller
and smaller liquid droplets
 about the same number of molecules are
re-entering water surface as are escaping
= equilibrium.

vapour
pressure equilibrium

For a curved surface saturated

of a droplet, get higher
vapour pressure for unsaturated
same temperature

So air needs to be super-saturated temperature

(with respect to a plane water surface)
to be in equilibrium with a droplet
 Convenient diameter sizes to
remember:
Typical
raindrop condensation nucleus 0.2 mm,
2000 mm droplet 20 mm,
raindrop 2000 mm.
Typical
cloud droplet
20 mm
The important point to note is
that small cloud droplets have
a greater curvature and hence
have a greater rate of
condensation evaporation.
nuclei
 to stop them evaporating away,
0.2 mm
smaller droplets require an even
greater vapour pressure (i.e.
higher supersaturation).
So what level of supersaturation do
you need to produce a
condensation nuclei (0.2 mm)
of pure water
by homogeneous nucleation?
 Homogeneous Nucleation

Chance collisions of Embryonic water

H2O molecules – droplet – large
more likely as vapour enough to remain
pressure increases intact

1. When a droplet forms, latent heat of condensation is released.

2. However, energy is required to overcome the surface tension needed
to hold a drop together.
If energy from (1) > (2) then drop forms & grows; if (2) > (1) drop shrinks
E = Change in energy when 4 3 e
a droplet of radius R forms
E  4R   R nkT ln
2

3 es
System will
always tend to
minimise E Air at less than 100% humidity
cannot keep pure water drops:
they evaporate and shrink
Droplet
always
shrinks

Droplet
grows Supersaturated air can grow
droplets if they are large enough
to overcome surface tension
Droplet
shrinks

Unstable equilibrium radius

 States of equilibrium

Stable Unstable Neutral Conditional

instability
The curvature effect

Cloud
droplets
grow

Cloud Cloud droplets on the line

droplets are in unstable equilibrium
shrink

Small droplets (0.2 mm) require supersaturations on the order

of 1% (i.e. RH=101%) to start growing - but this level of
supersaturation is rarely seen – suggests that homogenous
nucleation won’t work.
Condensation nuclei
To form the smallest droplets of pure water by direct
condensation (homogeneous nucleation) requires super-
saturations of well over 100%. This never happens.

Instead these droplets are formed by condensation

around existing small particles (heterogeneous
nucleation) which are called condensation nuclei
(Aitken nuclei).

There may be 103 - 109 such nuclei per cm3 with radii
<= 0.2 mm.

These particles (aerosol particles) may be salt from sea

spray, or particles from pollutant emissions
 Asian Brown Cloud - Biomass burning from forest
fires, vegetation clearing and fossil fuel burning and
‘dirty’ industries produce particulate material for the
shrouding haze, perhaps 3 km thick.

Brown cloud reaches up to top Kuala Lumpur London smog

of Himalayas
Volcanic ash – volcanoes also release SO2, which oxidises to H2SO4
Natural sources:
Fires (not always
natural)
Volcanoes – SO2

Layer of sulphuric
acid aerosol
in the stratosphere
from Mt. Pinatubo,
1991
Hemel Hempstead, Dec. 2005

Black carbon aerosol

from incomplete
combustion
Buncefield oil depot fire, 2005
Satellite image at 1045 GMT,
~5 hours after start of fire
Top of BL
Nottingham Skew T-log P on day of
Buncefield Fire (12Z, 11 Dec 2005)
 Aerosol properties
• Hydrophobic Greek for ‘water’ Greek for ‘wet’
• Neutral
• Hydrophilic (or hygroscopic – same thing)
– to act as a cloud condensation nuclei, the
aerosol must be hydrophilic – i.e. have an
affinity for water
– often also soluble (e.g., NaCl, H2SO4)–
presence of a dissolved solute lowers the
equilibrium vapour pressure
Some nuclei are hygroscopic and attract water
molecules very strongly, especially while the water
droplets are still small and there is still a high
concentration of chemicals from the original nucleii (eg
salt in the forming water droplet).

The salt ions bind closely to water vapour molecules,

making it more difficult for them to evaporate – hence
lower equilibrium
vapour pressures over impure water droplet. This is
the Solute Effect and permits condensation at relative
humidity < 100 %.
 Summary
• There are 2 theoretical paths for water to condense to
form sub-micron droplets
• Homogeneous nucleation can be ruled out because it
requires super-saturation levels much higher than
observed
• Heterogeneous nucleation, where existing particles form
the ‘core’ of droplets, is always the path followed.
• The pre-existing particles are aerosol particles, formed
from natural and man-made emissions, and are
everywhere
• Hygroscopic aerosol particles are particularly effective
• As drops grow, the physics of homogeneous nucleation
becomes more relevant in determining droplet size
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html
Analysis 0000 Friday 30 Oct
Forecast 0000 31 Oct
1200 Saturday 31 Oct
0000 Sunday 01 Nov
1200 Sunday 01 Nov