Effect of Surfactant on Cloud Formation

Atmospheric aerosols usually consist of inorganic salts and organic substances, including surfactants at a significant concentration. Most importantly, the latter can reduce the surface tension at the liquid–vapor surfaces, where they preferentially adsorb due to their amphiphilic structure. As a result, processes such as droplet coalescence, development of precipitation and ultimately cloud lifetime, crucially depend on the presence of surfactants in the aerosols. Here, we present a numerical model for cloud droplet formation, which is based on the Lagrangian particle-based microphysics-scheme super-droplet method and takes into account the presence of surfactant in the droplets. Our results show that surfactant facilitates cloud formation by increasing the number and size of activated droplets, which concentrate at the bottom of the cloud, while the largest droplets are concentrated at the top of the cloud. This indicates a circulation of droplets that involves activation and growth processes from the bottom of the cloud towards the top. Moreover, our conclusions are independent of the particular approach used for modeling the diffusion of Eulerian variables due to the subgrid-scale turbulence. We anticipate that our results will enrich our understanding of the role of surfactants in the behavior of atmospheric aerosols and will pave the way for further developments in the numerical modeling of systems with surfactants at macroscopic scales.