Abstract
Evaporation decreases the mass and increases the isotope composition of
falling drops. Combining and integrating the dependence of the
evaporation on the drop diameter and on the drop-environment humidity
difference, the square of drop diameter is found to decrease with the
square of vertical distance below cloud base. Drops smaller than 0.5 mm
evaporate completely before falling 700 m in typical subtropical marine
boundary layer conditions. The effect on the isotope ratio of
equilibration with the environment, evaporation, and kinetic molecular
diffusion is modeled by molecular and eddy diffusive fluxes after Craig
and Gordon (1965), with a size-dependent parameterization of diffusion
that enriches small drops more strongly, and approaches the rough
aerodynamic limit for large drops. Rain shortly approaches a steady
state with the subcloud vapor by exchange with a length scale of 40 m.
Kinetic molecular diffusion enriches drops up to as they evaporate by up
to +5~\permil~for
deuterated water (HDO) and
+3.5~\permil~for
H$_2$$^{18}$O. Rain evaporation enriches undiluted subcloud
vapor by +12~\permil~per
mm rain, explaining enrichment of vapor in evaporatively cooled
downdrafts that contribute to cold pools. Microphysics enriches the
vapor lost by the early and complete evaporation of smaller drops in the
distribution. Vapor from hydrometeors is more enriched than it would be
by Rayleigh distillation or by mixtures of liquid rain and vapor in
equilibrium with rain.