Aerosol Physics and Optics Group

The vision of the Aerosol Physics and Optics Group is to reduce uncertainties of predictions of future climate and to improve health through better air quality by advancing the scientific understanding of environmental impacts of atmospheric aerosols. We focus on aerosol physical and optical properties that remain poorly quantified or hinder identification of effective mitigation pathways.

Our mission is to perform long-term observations of atmospheric aerosol at the high-altitude research station Jungfraujoch and at the Payerne observatory in order to quantify spatio-temporal variability of aerosol burden and properties driven by sources, transport and transformation, as well as removal processes. Our observations are embedded in the Global Atmosphere Watch program of the World Meteorological Organization and in the Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS). We also aim at quantifying aerosol-cloud and aerosol-radiation interactions in laboratory and field experiments. One of the main topics is the relationship between physico-chemical and optical properties of aerosols, on the one hand to predict radiative impacts from aerosol properties, and on the other hand to retrieve aerosol properties from optical measurements using aerosol polarimetry.