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Abstract The processing of aerosol by droplet collision‐coalescence is analyzed in three‐dimensional simulations of drizzling stratocumulus using a Lagrangian cloud model for the representation of aerosol and cloud microphysics. Collision‐coalescence processing is shown to create a characteristic bimodality in the aerosol size distribution. We show that the large‐scale dynamics of the stratocumulus‐topped boundary layer are key to understanding the amount of time available for collision‐coalescence processing. The large‐scale dynamics enable aerosol particles to repeat a cycle of droplet condensation, collision‐coalescence, and evaporation, which causes a steady increase in aerosol size. This process is continued until the aerosol grows so large that droplet growth is substantially accelerated and multiple collisions occur within one cycle, forming precipitation‐sized droplets that are lost to the surface, including the aerosol. An analytical relationship is derived that captures the fundamental shape of the processed aerosol size distribution.
Hoffmann et al. (Thu,) studied this question.