Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols

Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols is the study of tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the air — including soot, organic compounds, and secondary particles formed by chemical reactions — alongside the gases that produce and transform them. These aerosols shape both air quality, by contributing to smog and haze that affect human health, and global climate, by absorbing or scattering sunlight and influencing cloud formation in ways that remain difficult to quantify precisely. A central challenge is that aerosol sources, composition, and formation pathways vary enormously across regions and conditions, making it hard to build models that accurately reproduce observations from field campaigns, satellites, and ground monitors. Current research is working to close gaps in how organic aerosol mass is accounted for, how black carbon ages and mixes in the atmosphere, and how all of this feeds into more reliable projections of air pollution and climate forcing.

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172,395

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Keywords

Atmospheric AerosolsBlack CarbonOrganic AerosolAir QualityClimate ForcingAerosol Formation