Aerosols are small dust particles in the air, such as soot, ash and desert dust. They have a major influence on air pollution and climate change, but their precise role is insufficiently known. That is why scenarios for global warming up to the year 2100 vary approximately 3 degrees Celsius.
Most aerosols have a cooling effect by reflecting and absorbing sunlight (aerosol-radiation interactions) and by changing the properties of clouds (aerosol-cloud interactions). But one type of aerosol–soot–contributes to global warming by boosting the warming effects of greenhouse gases. At SRON we work on space instrumentation, retrieval algorithms and data exploitation to better understand and quantify the effects of aerosols on climate and air quality.
