Mountain-Wave Polar Stratospheric Clouds — Cross-Section (2D)

Real polar stratospheric clouds rarely form in a spatially uniform layer — they are famously triggered first, and most intensely, in the cold phase of mountain lee waves downwind of terrain like the Antarctic Peninsula. This 2D companion to the 3D PSC box model renders that mechanism directly: a coherent standing-wave temperature field across one horizontal wavelength and the 14–24 km altitude layer, with per-particle radius growth governed by the classical diffusional-growth law and a real Stokes–Cunningham terminal velocity (rather than a fixed fall-speed constant) driving denitrification and dehydration. A live time-series strip chart tracks remaining HNO₃, remaining H₂O, and the surface-area-weighted ClOx activation fraction as the column evolves — a view the 3D scene has no equivalent for.