Recirculation and growth of raindrops in simulated shallow cumulus

Abstract This study investigates growth processes of raindrops and the role of recirculation of raindrops for the formation of precipitation in shallow cumulus. Two related cases of fields of lightly precipitating shallow cumulus are simulated using Large‐Eddy Simulation combined with a Lagrangian drop model for raindrop growth and a cloud tracking algorithm. Statistics from the Lagrangian drop model yield that most raindrops leave the cloud laterally and then evaporate in the subsaturated cloud environmental air. Only 1%–3% of the raindrops contribute to surface precipitation. Among this subsample of raindrops that contribute to surface precipitation, two growth regimes are identified: those raindrops that are dominated by accretional growth from cloud water, and those raindrops that are dominated by selfcollection among raindrops. The mean cloud properties alone are not decisive for the growth of an individual raindrop but the in‐cloud variability is crucial. Recirculation of raindrops is found to be common in shallow cumulus, especially for those raindrops that contribute to surface precipitation. The fraction of surface precipitation that is attributed to recirculating raindrops differs from cloud to cloud but can be larger than 50%. This implies that simple conceptual models of raindrop growth that neglect the effect of recirculation disregard a substantial portion of raindrop growth in shallow cumulus.