A theoretical study of the wet removal of atmospheric pollutants. Part I: the redistribution of aerosol particles captured through nucleation and impaction scavenging by growing cloud drops.

Abstract A theoretical model is formulated which allows the processes that control the wet deposition of atmospheric pollutants to be included in cloud dynamic models. The model considers the condensation process and the collision-coalescence process which, coupled together, control the fate of atmospheric aerosol particles removed by clouds and precipitation through nucleation scavenging and impaction scavenging. The model was tested by substituting a simple parcel model for the dynamic framework. In this form the model was used to determine the time evolution of the aerosol particle mass scavenged by drops as well as the aerosol particle mass left unactivated in air as “drop-interstitial”…