Abstract
Fog is an atmospheric phenomenon that has important environmental consequences related to visibility, air quality and climate change on local and regional scales. The formation of radiation fog results from a complex balance between surface radiative cooling, turbulent mixing in the surface layer, aerosol growth by deliquescence and activation of fog droplets. During the ParisFog field experiment, out of 16 events forecasted for radiation fog, activated fog materialized in seven events, while in five other events the visibility dropped to 1–2 km but haze particle size remained below the critical size of activation. To better understand the conditions that lead to or do not lead to sustained fog droplet activation, we performed a comparative study of dynamic, thermal, radiative and microphysical processes occurring between sunset and fog (or quasi-fog) onset. We selected two radiation fog events and two quasi-radiation fog events that occurred under similar large-scale conditions for this comparative study. We identified that aerosol growth by deliquescence and droplet activation actually occurred in both quasi-fog events, but only during <1 h. Based on ParisFog measurements, we found that the main factors limiting sustained activation of droplets at fog onset in the Paris metropolitan area are (1) lack of mixing in the surface layer (typically wind speed <0.5 ms−1), (2) relative humidity exceeding 90 % throughout the residual layer, (3) low cooling rate in the surface layer (typically less than −1 °C per hour on average) due to weak radiative cooling (0 to −30 Wm−2) and near zero sensible heat fluxes, and (4) a combination of the three factors listed above during the critical phase of droplet activation preventing the transfer of cooling from the surface to the liquid layer. In addition, we found some evidence of contrasted aerosol growth by deliquescence under high relative humidity conditions in the four events, possibly associated with the chemical nature of the aerosols, which could be another factor impacting droplet activation.
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Acknowledgments:
The authors would like to acknowledge Météo-France, Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Polytechnique and Air Parif for providing the measurements used in this study and the support to the ParisFog program. The authors are indebted to the many volunteers who carried out the measurements during the ParisFog field campaign. The authors would like to pay tribute to their colleague Laurent Gomes, a scientist from the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques, who passed away unexpectedly in 2012. The ParisFog research program could not have been initiated without his leadership and enthusiasm.
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Haeffelin, M., Dupont, JC., Boyouk, N. et al. A Comparative Study of Radiation Fog and Quasi-Fog Formation Processes During the ParisFog Field Experiment 2007. Pure Appl. Geophys. 170, 2283–2303 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-013-0672-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-013-0672-z