Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Jan 2012)

A hybrid bin scheme to solve the condensation/evaporation equation using a cubic distribution function

  • T. Dinh,
  • D. R. Durran

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-1003-2012
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 2
pp. 1003 – 1011

Abstract

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A computationally efficient method is proposed to replace the piecewise linear number distribution in a hybrid bin scheme with a piecewise cubic polynomial. When the linear distribution is replaced by a cubic, the errors generated in solutions to the condensation/evaporation equation are reduced by a factor of two to three. Alternatively, using the cubic distribution function allows reducing the number of bins by 20 ± 5% when solving the condensation/evaporation problem without sacrificing accuracy.