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Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Atmospheric Environment
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosenv

Impact of aerosol particles on cloud formation: Aircraft measurements in China

Qiang Zhang a, Jiannong Quan a, b, *, Xuexi Tie c, Mengyu Huang a, Xincheng Ma a
a
Beijing Weather Modification Office, Beijing, China
b
Institute of Urban Meteorology, CMA, Beijing, China
c
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In-situ aircraft measurements of aerosols and clouds of 7 flights during the period from July to
Received 17 June 2010 September of 2008 are analyzed in Beijing, China. The measured aerosol concentrations indicated that
Received in revised form the Beijing region was highly polluted by aerosol particles. The impact of heavy aerosol particle loadings
12 October 2010
on cloud formation is studied. The microphysical characters of clouds (including number concentrations
Accepted 15 October 2010
of cloud droplets (Nc), cloud droplet radius (Rc), liquid water content (LWC)), and number concentra-
tions of aerosol particles (Na) were measured during the experiments. The aircraft measurements
Keywords:
indicated that under high aerosol particle conditions, large number of cloud droplets was formed with
Heavy aerosol pollution
Aircraft measurements
small size of droplets. By contrast, under low aerosol particle conditions, the formation of cloud droplets
Cloud formation was limited by the number of Na. In this case, small number of cloud droplets was formed with large size
CCN and LWC of droplets. The number concentrations of cloud droplets were sensitivity to LWC under high aerosol
Beijing particle conditions. With low LWC value (<0.1 g m
3), the Nc was slowly increased with the Na. For
example, the cloud droplets were increased from 200 to 300 cm
3, while aerosol particles were
increased from 1000 to 6000 cm
3, indicating that a large amount of aerosol particles were unchanged
under low LWC condition. By contrast, with high LWC value (>0.5 g m
3), the activation of aerosol
particles to become cloud droplets was significantly enhanced. For example, the cloud droplets were
increased from 700 to 1900 cm
3, while aerosol particles were increased from 1000 to 6000 cm
3,
suggesting that a large amount of aerosol particles were converted to cloud droplets when there were
enough LWC for supporting such conversions. This study also suggests that the Rc was also very
sensitivity to the LWC values. The increase in the LWC values led to significant increase in the size of
cloud droplets.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Atmospheric aerosols have important effects on cloud formation,
precipitation, and climate changes (IPCC, 2007; Ramanathan et al.,
2005). For example, aerosol particles change the formation and
properties of clouds (Andreae et al., 2004), radiative energy budget
of the Earth (Andreae et al., 2005), atmospheric stability (Zhao et al.,
2006), and deep convective clouds (Rosenfeld et al., 2008). At the
present, we do not fully understand the above mentioned process,
especially how aerosols affect cloud formation, water cycle, and
radiant energy budget in the climate system (Stevens, 2008).
China is one of the regions with heavy aerosol loadings (Li et al.,
2007; Tie et al., 2006), and the high concentrations of aerosols are
mainly resulted from human activities, and dust storms (Zhang
* Corresponding author at: Beijing Weather Modification Office, Beijing 100089,
China.
E-mail address: quanjn1975@gmail.com (J. Quan).
et al., 2006; Shao et al., 2006; Chan and Yao, 2008). Studies
regarding the aerosol, cloud, and precipitation in this region indi-
cated that the high concentrations of aerosols have already affected
the clouds, precipitation, and climate. For example, Jin and
Shepherd (2008) analyzed the interactions between aerosols and
clouds/rainfall in warm season in eastern China based on the
analysis of satellite data. Their study suggested that aerosols have
more effects on cloud formation than convective rainfall, and the
effects on cloud formation were more frequents over ocean than
over land. Zhao et al. (2006) studied a long-record of precipitation,
satellite aerosol data and meteorological sounding data over
central-eastern China. Their study suggested that aerosols (espe-
cially black carbons) enhanced atmospheric stability, and the
enhancement in atmospheric stability tend to depress upward
motion and precipitation in central-eastern China. Menon et al.
(2002) studied the climate effects of black carbons on climate in
China and India. Their study suggested that black carbons affect
large scale circulations and hydrologic cycles with significant
regional climate effects.

1352-2310/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.10.025
 Author's personal copy

666 Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672

In the previous studies, cloud data is mainly collected from
satellite observations, and detailed microphysical parameters of
clouds in central-eastern China are poorly understood. Thus, in-situ
measurements of aerosols and clouds are urgently needed in order
to study the impacts of aerosol particles on cloud formation,
precipitation, and climate change in this region.
There were several studies regarding the aircraft measurements
of aerosols and cloud droplets in central-eastern China. For
example, Deng et al. (2009) showed that under very low cloud
liquid water content, the measured cloud droplets number
concentrations (with high aerosol concentrations) were less than
100 cm
3, indicating LWC plays important roles in controlling the
number concentrations of cloud droplets. In this study, the detailed
aerosol particles and cloud droplets were measured under different
LWC conditions during the period from July to September, 2008.
This study intends to address the following issues; (a) to analyze
the measured characteristics of aerosols, cloud condensation
nucleation (CCN), and cloud droplets in central-eastern China; (b)
to analyze the relationship between aerosols and cloud droplets;
and (c) to study the impact of heavy aerosol concentrations on
cloud formation. The paper is organized as the follows. In Section 2,
we describe the experimental method; including the instruments
and measurement data. In Section 3, the measured result is
analyzed and discussed. The summary of the results is given in
section 4.
2. Data and method
2.1. Instruments on the aircraft
Several instruments are mounted on an aircraft (Y12) for
measuring the concentrations of aerosol particles in different size
bins, CCN number concentrations, and the size distributions and
number concentrations of cloud droplets over the Beijing region,
China. Aerosol particles ranging from 0.10 to 3.0 mm in diameter are
measured by a Passive Cavity Aerosol Spectrometer Probe (PCASP-
200). During the measurement, three heaters in PCASP were turned
on, which can reduce the RH to 40% in the inlet air (Strapp et al.,
1992). Cloud droplets with diameter ranging from 0.6 to 50 mm
were measured by a Cloud, Aerosol and Precipitation Spectrometer
(CAPS). In this study, only particles with diameter of larger than
2 mm were counted as cloud droplets. The LWC in cloud was calcu-
lated based on the measurement of volume concentration of cloud
droplets. In addition to cloud droplet measurement, the activation
of aerosol particles to CCN was also measured by a CCN counter
(CCNC; Droplet Measurement Technologies Inc., DMT) during the
flights. This instrument operates in a continuous flow mode, making
measurements of CCN in every second. The CCNC operates at
a single supersaturation, from the range 0.07e2.0%, with an air flow
rate of 500 cm3 min
1. During flights, the super-saturation point
was set as 0.3%. The supersatuation given by DMT CCNC during field
measurements might exist some deviation. According to the work of
Rose et al. (2008), the relative deviations of supersatuation can
reach up to 10%, especially at low supersaturation, which will
influence the CCN concentration correspondingly. The Meteoro-
logical measurements included location, temperature, relative
humidity, barometric pressure and wind using with AIMMS-20
(Aircraft Integrated Meteorological Measurement System, Advan-
tech Research Inc.). PCASP and CAPS were mounted on the wings of
aircraft, which allowed air to directly follow into the instruments.
For cloud droplets, they were detected with environmental pressure
and temperature. For aerosol particles, they were detected with
environmental pressure, and the heaters in PCASP were turn on
during the measurement. For CCN measurement, the inlet (Male
Run Tee 15MF-6 by Truly Tubular Fitting Corp) was mounted on the
top of aircraft, and connected to a stainless steel tube. In this
experiment, we didn’t perform a RH control on CCNC.
ALL the instruments (PCASP, CAPS and CCNC) are calibrated by
DMT every year before aircraft measurements are taken placed. In
addition, the PCASP and CAPS are calibrated using polystyrene latex
spheres (PSL) by Duke Scientific Corporation every month. The size
distribution, total volume of particles, mean diameter, and number
concentrations of aerosol particles are online analyzed during
measurements. The measured cloud droplet number concentration
was sampled and corrected for dead-time and coincidence
according to the method suggested by Brenguier and Amodei
(1989) and Baumgardner et al. (2002). The sampling interval was
1 s during all flights. The aircraft flight altitudes were from surface
to 6 km. During the cloud detection, the aircraft horizontally
penetrated into small cumuli and other non-precipitation clouds,
but was not able to enter strong cumuli clouds. The horizontal scale
of small cumuli clouds were often about several hundred meters,
and a few cumuli clouds were about 1e2 km s. The field measure-
ment was carried out in the Beijing region, China during the period
from July to September 2008. The detailed flight information is
shown in Table 1.
2.2. Data processing
According to previous studies, there were several criterions to
define the appearance of clouds, such as (a) Nc > 10 cm
3 (Rangno
and Hobbs, 2005; Stith et al., 2006); (b) LWC > 0.01 g m
3 (Gultepe

Table 1
Flight Information regarding the 13 cloud detections.

Date Cloud height Sampling Aero under Cloud droplet concentration (Nc, cm
3) and size(Rc,mm) under different LWC(g m
3)
(meter) number cloud (cm
3)
<0.1 0.1e0.3 0.3e0.5 >0.5

Nc Rc Nc Rc Nc Rc Nc Rc
29/Jul. 2071e2439 592 6021.97 164.56 2.01 1512.88 3.61 1934.39 4.26 2212.78 5.04
30/Jul. 2442e2592 413 2672.73 374.46 2.27 1276.08 3.41
31/Jul. 679e957 65 4664.36 309.24 2.68 1572.68 3.77 1346.50 5.30 2218.78 5.57
31/Jul. 2474e2552 210 244.71 187.76 4.97 184.17 7.86 264.78 8.73 284.55 10.10
31/Jul. 2120e2242 68 374.58 56.04 7.56 187.85 8.58 273.82 9.34 475.69 9.57
13/Aug. 1626e2088 98 3375.45 92.86 4.33 304.97 7.02 600.09 6.96 1482.83 7.34
13/Aug. 639e769 277 7337.97 352.11 2.52 1833.65 3.71 2536.2 4.02
21/Aug. 2305e2697 107 1249.14 401.86 5.18 875.97 6.48 764.32 8.56
21/Aug. 1145e1433 1791 4284.22 391.47 5.69 928.64 6.34 912.19 7.83 1170.03 8.21
21/Aug. 3333e3668 1312 829.15 56.56 8.09 464.75 6.61 500.43 7.55 653.9 7.36
9/Sep. 1400e1772 194 4786.51 242.05 6.57 766.49 6.60 1075.04 6.99 1372.99 7.52
9/Sep. 4256e4654 442 184.03 76.42 8.92 160.17 8.74 187.59 9.49 197.70 11.35
17/Sep. 665e889 73 6691.29 253.84 2.71 1690.13 3.87
 Author's personal copy

Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672 667

et al., 1996); or (c) Nc > 0.1 cm
3 and LWC > 0.0005 g m
3 (Gultepe X X 
Rg ¼ EXP ni lnri = ni ; (5)
and Isaac, 2004). In this study, the appearance of clouds is deter-
mined by the following criterion, i.e., Nc > 10 cm
3 and
LWC > 0.001 g m
3. In this work, the measurements of clouds were X  2 X 1=2
valid by the following methods. First, the records with a total
sg ¼ EXP ni lnri
lnrg = ni
1 ; (6)
number concentration of less than 10 m
3 or an integrated liquid
water content of less than 0.001 g m
3 are removed from analysis. 3 ¼ s=r; (7)
Second, to avoid the influence of ice particles, only the data with
ambient temperature of larger than 0  C is considered. As a result, where ni represents the number concentration of particles in ith bin
there are total 13 cloud detections during the observation period, of PCASP or CAPS (particles bigger than 2 mm); ri is the arithmetic
and a total of 5642 cloud data were collected (see Table 1). The mean radius of ith bin; and rw is the density of liquid water.
measurements of aerosol particle in cloud will be influenced by
cloud droplets. Therefore the Na value in cloud was calculated as
3. Result and discussion
the averaged value of 300 meters under clouds. Table 1 indicates
that the measured Na ranges from 184 to 7337 cm
3, and the
3.1. Vertical distribution of aerosols and CCN
measured Nc ranges from 197 to 2218 cm
3, with the value of LWC
being larger than 0.5 g m
3. The vertical heights of detected cloud
One of the advantages of the aircraft measurements is that the
ranged from 98 to 462 meter from the bottom of the clouds, and
vertical distribution of aerosols and CCN were obtained. Fig. 1
bottom of clouds was usually lower than 2500 meter.
shows the vertical distributions of averaged aerosol particles,
The Nc, LWC, mean radius, standard deviation of the spectrum
CCN, effective radius of aerosols (Ra), Rg, and the ratio of CCN to Na.
about the effective mean radius (Re), geometric mean radius (Rg)
The geometric stand deviation of Rg is about 1.19e3.18 mm, with
are calculated as according to the following equations:
averaged value of 1.37 mm. Several interesting aspects are shown in
X the figure. For example, large amounts of aerosol particles were
Nc ¼ ni ; (1) constrained in the lower layer of the atmosphere (below 1 km),
indicating that the aerosol particles were mainly resulted from
X surface emissions (including both the direct emissions of particles
LWC ¼ ni ri3 rw 4p=3; (2)
and secondary formation of particles from the emissions of gas
X X phase pollutants). The averaged Na below 1 km was about
Re ¼ ni ri3 = ni ri2 ; (3) 6600 cm
3, suggesting that the aerosol particles in the Beijing
region were considerably higher than the aerosol particles
X X 1=2 measured in other regions, such as the observation of ACE-2
se ¼ ni ðri
re Þ2 = ni ; (4) (Pawlowska and Brenguier, 2000) and INDOEX (Ramanathan et al.,
2001). This result suggests that this area was heavily polluted by

Fig. 1. Averaged vertical distributions for aerosol particles of Na (cm
3), effective radius of aerosols of Ra (mm), geometric mean radius aerosols of Rg (mm), CCN number
concentration (cm
3), and ratio of CCN/Na.
 Author's personal copy
668 Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672
Fig. 2. Correlation between the ratio of CCN/Na and Ra (mm) during all flights.
aerosol particles. Above 1 km, there was a sharp transition of
aerosol concentrations, and the averaged aerosol concentrations
reduced to 2062 cm
3 at altitudes of 1e4.5 km. Above 4.5 km, the
averaged Na further reduced to 400 cm
3. The averaged radius
shows that the aerosol particles were generally small particles. The
particle size was large in the lower layer of the atmosphere (less
than 1 km) and gradually reduced with altitude. For example, the
averaged Re was 0.14, 0.12, and 0.09 mm, at altitudes of 0e1, 1e4.5,
and above 4.5 km, respectively. The measured CCN vertical
distribution was similar to the Na distribution, had highest
Fig. 3. Correlations between the radius of cloud droples (Rc, mm)/number of cloud droplets (Nc, cm
3) and LWC (g m
3) for two different cases. The Case-1 represents high aerosol
particle case (upper panel), and The Case-1 represents low aerosol particle case (Lower panel).
concentrations (3260 cm
3) at the altitude of 0e1 km, reduced to
720 cm
3 at the altitude of 1e4.5 km, and further decreased to
71 cm
3 above 4.5 km. This result indicates that the CCN concen-
tration in the Beijing regions was much higher than measurements
of ASTEX (Hudson and Xie, 1999), ACE-1 (Hudson et al., 1998), and
SCMS (Hudson and Yum, 2001), suggesting that the heavy aerosol
loadings in the Beijing region had important impact on the value of
CCN in the region. This is due to the fact that under certain
supersaturation, the ratio of CCN/Na depends on the aerosol size
and chemical compositions (including mixing state) (Frank et al.,
2006; Dusek et al., 2006; Lohmann et al., 2004; Ervens et al.,
2007). For a given ratio of CCN/Na, the CCN concentration is
proportional to the aerosol concentration (Na).
Different particles with different chemical composition have
different feathers in their sizes. For example, the organic particles
are generally smaller than inorganic particles (Broekhuizen et al.,
2006; McFiggans et al., 2006). Moreover, organic particles are
generally less CCN-active than inorganic particles (Raymond and
Pandis, 2002). Thus cloud-nucleating capability of aerosol parti-
cles is related to their size distribution (Dusek et al., 2006). In order
to have further insight of the effect of particles size on the CCN
activation of aerosols, we analyzed the relationship between the
ratio of CCN/Na and Ra (Fig. 2). The result shows that the ratio of
CCN/Na was linearly proportional to particle size. With particle
radius of 0.1 mm, the ratio of CCN/Na is 0.3, suggesting that 30% of
aerosol particles were active to become to CCN particles. When the
particle radius increased to 0.15 mm, the ratio of CCN/Na increased
to 0.5, indicating that 50% of aerosol particles were active to
become to CCN particles. This result shows that the aerosol parti-
cles, especially large aerosol particles, play important roles to
enhance the formation of CCN and clouds in the Beijing region.
 Author's personal copy
Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672
3.2. Cloud formation under different aerosol conditions
CCN can provide a link in understanding the relation of aerosols
with cloud droplets. Under higher ambient supersaturation (Sa),
more CCN can be activated and more cloud droplets (Nc) would be
formed. After CCNs are activated, they can grow to larger sizes and
form cloud droplets. The Sa in clouds depends on the water vapor
concentration, the temperature and the upward moving velocity of
air (Mason, 1971; Twomey, 1977; Beard and Ochs, 1993).
During this experiment, the measured aerosol, cloud droplet
concentrations and LWC covered a wide range of conditions, and
various cases were observed. In order to distinguish the characters
of cloud formation in different conditions, two cases are selected in
this study. The first case was selected for the measured values
during the flight on August/13, with high aerosol particle concen-
trations (Case-1). The second case was selected for the measured
values during the flight on July/31, with low aerosol particle
concentrations (Case-2). Fig. 3 shows the relationships between
LWC and Nc and between LWC and Rc for the 2 cases. Under the
high aerosol condition (Case-1), the cloud droplet concentrations
increased rapidly with the values of LWC. For example, when the
value of LWC was 0.1 g m
3, there were about 1000 cm
3 cloud
droplets. When the value of LWC was 0.4 g m
3, the number of
cloud droplets increased to 2600 cm
3. However, the size of cloud
droplets increased slowly with the values of LWC. By contrast,
under the low aerosol condition (Case-2), the cloud droplet
concentrations increased slowly with the values of LWC. However,
the size of cloud droplets increased rapidly with the values of LWC.
With large amounts of aerosol particles (Case-1), there were
enough particles which can potentially be active to become cloud
droplets, and the number of cloud droplets was strongly correlated
to the abundance of LWC. Because the certain amount water was
shared by large amount particles, the size of cloud droplets was
limited. As a result, large amounts of small cloud droplets were
formed in clouds. By contrast, the number of cloud droplets in the
Fig. 4. Schematic picture for the LWC limit and aerosol limit conditions for the conversion of aerosol particles to cloud droplets.
669
Case-2 was limited by aerosol particle concentrations. With small
amounts of aerosol particles, there were not enough particles
which can be active to become cloud droplets, and the number of
cloud droplets quickly reached to a cap value (e.g., about 250 cm
3).
With a certain number of cloud droplets, the increase in LWC is
related to increase in the size of the cloud droplets, rather than the
number of cloud droplets. As a result, small amounts of large size
cloud droplets were formed in clouds. Fig. 4 schematically shows
the 2 cases as mentioned above. In the following studies, the values
of LWC are classified to 4 different categories, such as (a) LWC < 0.1
(C1), (b) 0.1 < LWC < 0.3 (C2), (c) 0.3 < LWC < 0.5 (C3), and (d)
LWC > 0.5 (C4).
3.3. Cloud formation under different LWC conditions
Fig. 5 shows the relationship between Na and Nc under the
different LWC conditions. The result indicates that under the C1
condition, the Nc increased slowly with the Na, suggesting that there
is a large amount of aerosol particles which cannot be active to
become cloud droplets. For example, with aerosol particles of
6000 cm
3, only 300 cm
3 cloud droplets were produced, indicating
that large amounts of aerosol particles remained inactivated. By
contrast, under the C4 condition, the activation of aerosol particles to
become cloud droplets was significantly enhanced. For example, with
aerosol particles of 6000 cm
3, the Nc value was 1900 cm
3, sug-
gesting that large amounts of aerosol particles were converted to
cloud droplets. Under the C2 and C3 conditions, the rate of the
conversion was in the middle of the values in the C1 and C4 condi-
tions. This result is further confirmed by the relationship between Na
and the ratio of Nc/Na (shown in Fig. 6). As shown in Fig. 6, when
aerosol particles were low, the ratio of Nc/Na was generally large. For
example, with aerosol particles of 1000 cm
3, the ratios were 0.2,
0.46, 0.59, and 0.70 for the C1, C2, C3, and C4 conditions, respectively.
However, when the number of aerosol particles reached to
6000 cm
3, the ratios reduced to 0.05, 0.20, 0.21, and 0.34 for the C1,
 Author's personal copy

670 Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672

Fig. 5. Correlation between Nc and Na under different LWC values.

C2, C3, and C4 conditions. This analysis suggests that under high LWC condition (0.1 g m
3), small amounts of aerosol particles had been
condition (>0.5 g m
3), large amounts of aerosol particles had been converted to cloud droplets (20%).
converted to cloud droplets (70%) when aerosol particles were small Further analysis indicates that LWC has weak relationship to the
(1000 cm
3). By contrast, for the same conditions but under low LWC number concentrations, but had strong relationship with the size of

Fig. 6. Same as Fig. 5, but between the ratio of Nc/Na and Na.
 Author's personal copy
Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672
Fig. 7. Same as Fig. 5, but between Rc and Na.
cloud droplets (shown in Fig. 7). Fig. 7 shows that the averaged
cloud radius was strongly related to the values of LWC, and also
varied strongly with number of aerosol particles. For example, with
aerosol particles of 1000 cm
3, the cloud radius was 5.5, 6.5, 7.5,
and 8.5 mm for the C1, C2, C3, and C4 conditions, respectively. When
aerosol particles increase to 6000 cm
3, the cloud radius was 4, 4.5,
6, and 6.5 mm for the C1, C2, C3, and C4 conditions, respectively. The
impact of aerosol concentration on the size of cloud droplets would
have important effects on the gravity settling velocity and therefore
the resident time in clouds.
4. Summary
Beijing area is one of the regions with very heavy aerosol
loadings. High concentration of aerosols over this region causes
wide-ranging potential consequences, including cloud formation,
precipitation, weather and climate change. During the past 20
years, a few in-situ measurements of clouds were carried out, but
the relation of aerosols with cloud microphysical parameters over
this region is still poorly understood. In this study, in-situ aircraft
measurements of aerosols and clouds of 7 flights during the period
from July to September of 2008 are analyzed. The results are
summarized as follows:
(1) This result indicates that the number of aerosol particles (Na)
have important impact on microphysical character of clouds
over the regions with very heavy aerosol loadings. Under high
aerosol particle case large number of cloud droplets was
formed with smaller size of droplets. By contrast, under low
aerosol particle case, the formation of cloud droplets was
limited by the number of aerosol particles (Na). In this case,
671
small number of cloud droplets was formed with larger size of
droplets.
(2) The relationship between LWC and aerosol particles/cloud
droplets is studied. In this study, the values of LWC are classi-
fied to be 4 different categories, such as (a) LWC < 0.1 (C1), (b)
0.1 < LWC < 0.3 (C2), (c) 0.3 < LWC < 0.5 (C3), and (d)
LWC > 0.5 (C4). The result suggests that with low LWC value
(C1), the number of cloud droplets (Nc) increased slowly with
the number of aerosol particles (Na), and large amounts of
aerosol particles remained inactivated. By contrast, with high
LWC value (C4), the activation of aerosol particles to become
cloud droplets was significantly enhanced, implying that LWC
is an important parameter to analyze the relationship between
aerosol particles and cloud droplets, especially in high polluted
aerosol regions.
(3) In addition to the number concentrations of cloud droplets,
LWC is also closely correlated to the size of cloud droplets. This
study suggests that averaged cloud radius was strongly
dependent upon the LWC values, and also varied strongly with
number of aerosol particles. For example, with aerosol particles
of 1000 cm
3, the cloud radius was 5.5, 6.5, 7.5, and 8.5 mm for
the C1, C2, C3, and C4 conditions, respectively. When aerosol
particles increases to 6000 cm
3, the cloud radius was 4, 4.5, 6,
and 6.5 mm for the C1, C2, C3, and C4 conditions, respectively.
Acknowledgments
This research is partially supported by The National Basic
Research Program of China (2006CB403701); National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 40905060;
Science and Technology Administration of China under Grant No.
2006BAC12B00; China Meteorological Administration (CMA) under
 Author's personal copy
672 Q. Zhang et al. / Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 665e672
Grant No GYHY200706036. The National Center for Atmospheric
Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
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