PNNL

Abstract

There are lots of interesting and intriguing features of aerosols near clouds – many of which can be quite engaging, as well being useful and climate-related. Exploring aerosol with the aid of the remote sensing, in situ observations and numerical modeling has piqued our curiosity and led to improve insights into the nature of aerosol and clouds and their complex relationship. This chapter conveys the outstanding issues of cloudy-sky aerosol retrievals of important climate properties and outlines their fruitful connections to other research areas such as in situ measurements and model simulations. The chapter focuses mostly on treating the inverse problems in the context of the passive satellite remote sensing and how they can improve our understanding of the cloud-aerosol interactions. The presentation includes a basis in the inverse problem theory, reviews available approaches and discusses their applications to partly cloudy situations. Potential synergy of observations and model simulations is described as well.