Atmospheric aerosols and clouds

Aerosols — tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere, from sea salt and desert dust to soot and sulfate pollution — interact with sunlight and help seed clouds, making them one of the most consequential and poorly constrained variables in the climate system. By scattering or absorbing incoming radiation and altering how clouds form, persist, and precipitate, aerosols influence both the global energy budget and the hydrological cycle in ways that ripple from regional weather patterns to long-term climate projections. Satellite observations and remote sensing have dramatically expanded the ability to map aerosol distributions and properties across the globe, yet quantifying exactly how much aerosols cool or warm the planet — their net radiative forcing — remains one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate models. Active research is pushing into the microphysics of ice nucleation, the feedbacks between aerosol loading and precipitation efficiency, and how anthropogenic emissions compound or offset the effects of natural dust and smoke.

Works

125,256

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1,638,310

Keywords

AerosolsClimateHydrological CycleAtmospheric DustRadiative ForcingClouds