The Influence of the Acoustic-electric Coalescence on Phase and Mass Transfer of Supercooled Drops

The objective of this work is to study the influence of electrical discharge on the evolution of the cloud droplet spectra using a 1-D cloud model. It is shown that droplet motion and the electrical effects produced by lightning may cause a rapid and effective droplet coalescence process, with noticeably more phase transfer from liquid toward frozen water. As a measure of the drop spectra changes, we investigated variations of the radar reflectivity factor and the mass-weighted mean diameters at five temperature levels (0, )5, )10, )15, and )20C) with 15 combinations of the initial conditions. The model simulations suggest that about where the lightning occurred, after a few seconds, the initial unimodal spectra of supercooled water drops can be transferred to the bimodal spectra of unfrozen and frozen water drops. The number of newly created frozen drops is a few orders less than unfrozen water drops, but can still be very important for further transformations due to gravitational coagulation and other microphysical processes, e.g. glaciation. The results indicate that the procedure established to describe processes related to the electrical discharge and droplet spectra transformations can be used within a 3-D mesoscale model. It is concluded that the outcome can be also used to explain some of the physical characteristics inferred from polarimetric radar observations.