Application of the Super-Droplet Method to Mixed-Phase Clouds Based on the Porous Spheroid Approximation of Ice Particles

The super-droplet method (SDM) is a particle-based and probabilistic numerical scheme, which enables the accurate simulation of cloud microphysics with less demand on computation. In the SDM, the time evolution of aerosol/cloud/precipitation particles is calculated explicitly by solving the fundamental governing equations of cloud microphysics.

For the purpose of performing large eddy simulations of mixed-phase clouds, we applied the SDM to ice phase cloud microphysics. Our strategy is to translate the multicomponent bin model of Chen and Lamb (1994) into the SDM framework, in which the ice particles are represented by porous spheroids. We also introduced some modifications and updates of the theory.

In this presentation, the basic equations employed for our mixed-phase SDM, and preliminary results of a cumulonimbus simulation will be shown.