Microphysical and meteorological measurements of fog supersaturation

Abstract

It has been surmised that fog supersaturation lies well below a few tenths of one percent, but it cannot be directly measured at present. In this paper, theoretical and empirical equations are developed which render it possible to calculate fog supersaturation from simultaneous microphysical and meteorological measurements at regular time intervals. Such measurements became available on four occasions. With the aid of these equations, comparisons are carried out in terms of several supersaturation parameters, as well as in terms of the change in isobaric cooling. When the nature of the data is taken into consideration, the results of these comparisons appear to lend reasonable support to the use of these equations in the calculation of fog supersaturation.