Abstract

Aerosols impact on climate directly by absorbing and/or scattering radiation and thus modifying the radiation budget of the atmosphere, as well as indirectly by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN) and thus affecting the cloud cover, the distribution of precipitation and the hydrological cycle. Also, aerosols released from natural sources, such as mineral dust emitted from arid desert areas, may as well burden the environment and lead to exceedances of limit values set by the EU. This is particularly evident in urban areas, where the contribution of the anthropogenic sources to the deterioration of the air quality is also significant. Finally, the connection between suspended particles and adverse health effects has been well established in the past decades and thus a part of the research community has focused on the precise estimation of people’s exposure to particulate matter. This talk merges a number of modelling studies that deal with simulating the aerosol impacts in the above different scales of environment. Would the development of an integrated modelling system, which would include interaction mechanisms between the various scales, aid to studying/controlling future aerosol impacts on environment?