An aerosol generation, calibration, and research facility has been developed with the major purpose of evaluating aerosol instrumentation, including quality assurance testing, intercomparison, performance evaluation, and calibration of aerosol sizing, bulk, and speciated mass-measuring instruments. The aerosol facility also provides excellent opportunities for basic aerosol research. Polydisper...

Aerosol radiative forcing is a critical, though variable and uncertain component of the global climate. Yet climate models rely on sparse information of the aerosol optical properties. In situ measurements, though important in many respects, seldom provide measurements of the undisturbed aerosol in the entire atmospheric column. Here we use 8 years of worldwide distributed data from the AERONET...

In a series of simulations with the global ECHAM5-HAM aerosol-climate model, the response to changes in anthropogenic emissions is analyzed. Traditionally, additivity is assumed in the assessment of the aerosol climate impact, as the underlying bulk aerosol models are largely constrained to linearity. The microphysical aerosol module HAM establishes degrees of freedom for nonlinear responses of...

A sectional aerosol model (CARMA) has been developed and coupled with the Community Earth System Model (CESM1). Aerosol microphysics, radiative properties, and interactions with clouds are simulated in the size-resolving model. The model described here uses 20 particle size bins for each aerosol component including freshly nucleated sulfate particles, as well as mixed particles containing sulfa...

In order to utilize satellite-based aerosol measurements for the determination of air quality, the relationship between aerosol optical properties (wavelength-dependent, column-integrated extinction measured by satellites) and mass measurements of aerosol loading (PM2.5 used for air quality monitoring) must be understood. This connection varies with many factors including those specific to the ...

This document describes the algorithms for simultaneous remote sensing of aerosol from EOS-MODIS over land and ocean. The algorithm will be used to monitor the aerosol optical thickness (proportional to the aerosol total loading) and size distribution (integrated on the vertical column) of the ambient (undisturbed) aerosol, over most of the globe (oceans and the moist parts of the continents) o...

Satellite instruments are commonly used for measurements of aerosol optical properties in the atmosphere. In this work we use such measurements for ultra-high energy cosmic ray studies. We introduce a method of preparation of aerosol maps for the location of the Pierre Auger Observatory. For these maps the data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) of the Aura satellite were analyzed for t...

Lidars are ideal for mapping the spatial distribution of aerosol concentrations, however efforts to convert the lidar measurements into estimates of the aerosol extinction or scattering coefficient are usually complicated. The difficulties arise from the uncertainty in the aerosol backscatter-to-extinction ratio and the lidar calibration. In marine conditions with little absorption, the aerosol...

With the global aerosol-climate model ECHAM5HAM we investigate the potential influence of organic aerosol originating from the ocean on aerosol mass and chemical composition and the droplet concentration and size of marine clouds. We present sensitivity simulations in which the uptake of organic matter in the marine aerosol is prescribed for each aerosol mode with varying organic mass and mixin...

Water can be a major component of aerosol particles, also serving as a medium for aqueous-phase reactions. In this study, a novel method is presented to calculate the aerosol liquid water content at high relative humidity based on measurements of aerosol hygroscopic growth factor, particle number size distribution and relative humidity in the Haze in China (HaChi) summer field campaign (July–Au...