Fig. 8

Cumulative distribution of maximum altitude of resolvable droplets (a) and microplastic particles in droplets (b). The graphs indicate the number of droplets / particles ejected above a specified altitude depending on raindrop diameter. Above the cut-off altitude h_cut marked by the asterisk, all droplets are detected by our simulations (solid line). Below h_cut, our simulations only provide a lower bound for the number ejected droplets (dashed line) due to limited simulation time as explained in section “Estimating time of droplet separation from crown and cut-off altitude h_cut”