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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3530</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Stochastic Collection Equation: Invariant Evolution of the Cloud Droplet&amp;ndash;Size Distribution</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yano</surname>
<given-names>Jun-Ichi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Waclawczyk</surname>
<given-names>Marta</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1039-4237</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ambaum</surname>
<given-names>Maarten</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>CNRM, UMR 3589 (CNRS), Météo-France, 31057, Toulouse Cedex, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Geophysics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>01</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>24</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jun-Ichi Yano et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3530/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3530/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3530/egusphere-2026-3530.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3530/egusphere-2026-3530.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The present paper presents a symmetry analysis of the stochastic collection equation (SCE), which describes the evolution of cloud droplets by their coalescence into larger sizes, and eventually to the size of rain droplets. As the main conclusion, the rain formation is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a simple consequence of the growth of the size of the droplets. When the given kernel is invariant under a scale transformation, the size distribution of the cloud droplets simply shift towards the larger sizes with time, asymptotically preserving its shape (&lt;em&gt;i.e., invariance&lt;/em&gt;), and no separate peak in distribution identified as rain emerges. Findings with the symmetry analysis are supported further by numerical experiments.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="24"/></counts>
</article-meta>
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