Drizzle

Drizzle tends to be the most frequent form of precipitation over large areas of the world's oceans, particularly in the colder regions of the subtropics.

Despite the low rates of surface accumulation, drizzle exerts a major influence over the structure, coverage, and radiative properties of clouds in these regions.

This has motivated scientists to design more sophisticated and sensitive instruments such as high-frequency radars which can detect drizzle.

These studies have shown that the quantity of drizzle is strongly linked to cloud morphology and tends to be associated with updrafts within the marine boundary layer.

However, it is not clear that the representation of the chemical and physical processes needed to accurately simulate the interaction between aerosols, clouds, and drizzle in current (as of 2005[update]) climate models is sufficient to fully understand the global impacts of changes in particulates.