Fog Research in China:An Overview

Fog can adversely affect human activity directly and indirectly, resulting in large losses both in terms of the local economy and lives. Much effort has been devoted to studies of fog across many areas of China, and in that context this paper aims to summarize climatic characteristics and review fog field experiments and their major results relating to fog mechanisms, physical properties and chemical characteristics. Progress in the application of remote sensing techniques and numerical simulation in fog research are also discussed. In particular, the effects of urbanization and industrialization on fog are highlighted. To end, perspectives on future fog research are outlined. The goal of this review paper is to introduce fog research in China to the global academic community and thus promote international collaboration on fog research. This is important because most papers on fog in China are published in Chinese, which are unreadable for the vast majority of non-Chinese researchers.

Mesoscale Numerical Simulation Study of Warm Fog Dissipation by Salt Particles Seeding

Based on the dynamic framework of WRF and Morrison 2-moment explicit cloud scheme, a salt-seeding scheme was developed and used to simulate the dissipation of a warm fog event during 6–7 November 2009 in the Beijing and Tianjin area. The seeding effect and its physical mechanism were studied. The results indicate that when seeding fog with salt particles sized 80 μm and at a quantity of 6 gm^（-2） at the fog top, the seeding effect near the ground surface layer is negative in the beginning period, and then a positive seeding effect begins to appear at 18 min, with the best effect appearing at 21 min after seeding operation. The positive effect can last about 35 min. The microphysical mechanism of the warm fog dissipation is because of the evaporation due to the water vapor condensation on the salt particles and coalescence with salt particles.The process of fog water coalescence with salt particles contributed mostly to this warm fog dissipation. Furthermore, two series of sensitivity experiments were performed to study the seeding effect under different seeding amounts and salt particles sizes. The results show that seeding fog with salt particles sized of 80 μm can have the best seeding effect, and the seeding effect is negative when the salt particle size is less than 10 μm. For salt particles sized 80 μm, the best seeding effect, with corresponding visibility of 380 m, can be achieved when the seeding amount is 30 g m^（-2）.

Summer Arctic sea fog

Synchronous or quasi-synchronous sea-land-air observations were conducted using advanced sea ice, atmospheric and marine instruments during China's First Arctic Expedition. Expedition.Based on the Precious data from the expedition, it was found that in the Arctic Ocean, most part of which is covered with ice or is mixed with ice, various kinds of sea fog formed such as advection fog, radiation fog and vapor fog. Each kind he its own characteristic and mechanics of creation. In the southern part of the Arctic Ocean, due to the sufficient warm and wet flow there, it is favorable for advection fog to form, which is dense and lasts a long time. On ice cap or vast floating ice, due to the strong radiation cooling effect, stable radiating fog is likely to form. In floating ice area there forms vapor fog with the appearance of masses of vapor from a boiling pot, which is different from short-lasting land fog. The study indicates that the reason why there are many kinds of sea fog form in the Arctic Ocean is because of the complicated cushion and the consequent sea-air interaction caused by the sea ice distribution and its unique physical characteristics. Sea fog is the atmospheric phenomenon of sea-air heat exchange. Especially, due to the high albedo of ice and snow surface, it is diffcult to absorb great amount of solar radiation during the polar days. Besides, ice is a poor conductor of heat; it blocks the sea-air heat exchange. The sea-air exchange is active in floating ice area where the ice is broken. The sea sends heat to the atmosphere in form of latent heat; vapor fog is a way of sea-air heat exchange influencing the climate and an indicator of the extent of the exchange. The study also indicates that the sea also transports heat to the atmosophere in form of sensible heat when vapor fog occurs.