** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is the official journal of the Japan Geoscience Union, published in collaboration with its 50 society members.

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    • Progress in Earth and Planetary Science
    Progress in Earth and Planetary Science

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    Research

    Atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences

    201910201910

    Large dependency of charge distribution in a tropical cyclone inner core upon aerosol number concentration

    Sato Y, Miyamoto Y, Tomita H

    Lightning, Tropical cyclone, Aerosol

    Distribution of charge density of cloud hydrometeor over R-z plane averaged over last 12 hours of the calculation. (a), (b), and (c) indicates the results with aerosol number concentration at 1 % supersaturation of 10 cm-3, 100 cm-3, and 1000-3, respectively.

    The impacts of aerosols on the charge distribution of hydrometeors and lightning flash density in a tropical cyclone (TC) were investigated using a meteorological model coupled with an explicit lightning model. The meteorological model successfully simulated the tripole structure of charge density distribution in a TC, as reported by previous studies. The impacts of aerosols were investigated through a sensitivity experiment with changing the aerosol number concentration. The tripole structure became unclear with increasing aerosol number concentrations. The positive charge distribution located in the lower layer was not seen, and raindrops with negative charge distribution reached the surface. As a result, the vertical structure of the charge density was dipolar in the polluted case. As the tripole structure shifted to dipole, the magnitude of the electric field tended to be large, and the flash number was large. By contrast, in the pristine case, the tripole structure was dominant, and the flash number was much smaller than in the polluted case.