Środowiskowe Seminarium Fizyki Atmosfery

Coping with climate change is one of the biggest challenges of mankind. Innovative technologies and policies are needed to reduce climate change itself and to adapt societies worldwide to the drastic effects climate change potentially has. Fundamental to this are reliable climate scenarios based on a good understanding of the climate system. One of the least understood aspects of the climate system is due to clouds: the indirect effects of aerosols. These fine dust particles serve as condensation nuclei for the formation of water droplets in the atmosphere. An increase of the aerosol concentration, by human activities for instance, leads to a larger number of cloud particles and longer cloud lifetime; the resulting cloud reflects more solar radiation. It may even cool the atmosphere in contrast to greenhouse warming. Although the indirect aerosol effects are conceptually understood, their quantification has proven to be very difficult as the effects are often cluttered by concurrent atmospheric processes and the technological means to unravel those do not exist yet. The need for unambiguous measurements of the indirect aerosol effects challenges the state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies of today. Consequently, the quantitative impact of the indirect aerosol effects is still highly uncertain. The presentation will address various aspects of the role that clouds and aerosols play in the climate system.