The role of raindrop coalescence and breakup in rainfall modeling

In a one dimensional model, the microphysical properties of rainwater content (M), rainfall rate (R) and radar reflectivity factor (Z) are examined in five numerical experiments. In general, neglecting both coalescence and breakup produces less than 10% of the errors in M and R within the top 2 km of a rainshaft (below cloud base). This is true regardless of the rain intensity and downdraft strength for Mashall-Palmer distributions at the top boundary. However, as the distance from the top boundary increases, the errors of M, R and Z calculated without including the collisional processes become larger. These errors tend to increase as the rain intensity increases or the downdraft decreases. The errors due to neglecting breakup are generally larger than those resulting from the exclusion of both coalescence and breakup. At lower levels, the errors for Z are usually very large unless the rainfall is very light (less than 10 mm h−1 ). For heavy rainfall with strong downdraft, coalescence and breakup can be neglected for fall distances greater than 2 km without appreciable errors. On the other hand, for heavy rainfall in a weak downdraft, coalescence and breakup must be included to ensure accuracy.