This page describes a practical exercise to aid in the understanding of the distribution of precipitation over a region with orographic uplift. Precipitation and the availability of water can have a strong impact on Ecology over such locations. The model used is a single column model (SCM), which models processes in a 1-dimensional column of air. At every level in the vertical the model calculates the evolution of cloud microphysical processes, such as:
The idea for the practical is that you will run the model for different scenarios.
(a) shows the cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC); (b) shows the liquid water mixing ratio, \(q_c\); (c) shows the rain water mixing ratio, \(q_r\); (d) shows the ice crystal number concentration, \(N_{ice}\). The red patch shows the location of the mountain over which the air is lifted. Height of the mountain is around 1 km.