Research at TROPOS
The scientific goals of TROPOS according to the two main topics “Aerosol Processes” and “Aerosol-Cloud Interaction” are carried out by all departments and central facilities in equally networked manner.
Aerosol processes
Although atmospheric aerosol particles make up only a tiny fraction of the mass of the Earth's atmosphere, they nevertheless produce clear phenomena visible and globally noticeable climate effects.
The IPCC identifies atmospheric aerosol as one of the parameters whose current lack of knowledge makes medium- and long-term climate predictions difficult (IPPC, 2013).
TROPOS is one of the few institutes that dedicates the majority of its researchers and resources to the investigation of aerosol-related processes.
Our activities include experimental measurements on the ground and remote sensing worldwide, as well as model simulations of atmospheric aerosol on the meso- and microscale.
Aerosol cloud interactions
The work in this sub-area is aimed at the quantitative description of aerosol-cloud interaction processes and their realistic representation in the model.
For this purpose, the extent to which the variability of the physical and chemical aerosol properties influences the microphysical radiation properties of clouds and how significant this influence is in comparison with the variability of the meteorological forcing variables is investigated.
In addition to these two main topics, the work carried out at TROPOS can be assigned to the two scales “Process studies in the laboratory and on small time and space scales” and “Long-term process and trend analyses”, resulting in the following research matrix.