Aerosols are airborne particles with negligible velocity. They can be solid (dust) or liquid (sea spray), organic (soot) or mineral (eroded rock), and of various sizes (from a few tenths of a nanometer to a hundred micrometers). The vast majority are of natural origin, although anthropogenic activities release large quantities.
Find out more about AERIS projects studying aerosols:
The ANR ICCARE project (Ice Crystals in deep convective Clouds: interaction with Aerosols, Radiation and Electricity; https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-21-CE01-0006, 2022-2026) aims to better understand how ice crystals interact with aerosols, cloud microphysics, […]
BIO-MAIDO, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), aims to gain a better understanding of the chemical and biological mechanisms in the presence of clouds that control the formation […]
Project objectives The AERO-HDF campaign project involves carrying out an airborne campaign in the Hauts-de-France region, using mainly the OSIRIS polarimetric imager and PLASMA photometer (LOA) and equipment on the […]
ACTRIS-FR is the French component of ACTRIS-EU for the observation and exploration of aerosols, clouds and reactive gases and their interactions. ACTRIS is a distributed European research infrastructure supporting research […]
CAPITOUL is a coupled study of the urban atmosphere and the formation/transformation of urban aerosols, with a measurement campaign planned in the Toulouse region between March 2004 and March 2005. […]
The Mediterranean region is currently identified as one of the future “hot spots” by climate modelling, indicating a strong decrease in precipitation during the summer period. However, these results are […]
PARCS has the overall goal to improve understanding about the sources, fate and impacts of pollution in the Arctic system, notably on climate, marine ecosystems and human society with the aim to improve […]
Objectives: to study the uplift mechanisms of desert aerosols at the source level, as a function of surface and meteorological conditions to evaluate the representation of Saharan atmospheric boundary layer (SAL) characteristics and lifting mechanisms in global and regional models Identify the errors attributable to the “simplified” representation of key aerosol lifting and transport processes in simulations performed by models of larger than mesoscale, and their impact on the forecast; to improve the reliability of aerosol products from space observation in the Saharan region.
Abstract The first overarching objective of the Clouds-Atmospheric Dynamics–Dust Interactions in West Africa (CADDIWA) airborne campaign is to assess dust aerosol related effects, namely the direct radiative effect (DRE), the semi-direct radiative […]
The first AMMA observation campaign was successfully carried out from mid-January to mid-February. It enabled the characterisation of the microphysical and radiative properties of aerosols and their dynamics during the […]
The AEROCLO-sA project (AErosol, RadiatiOn and CLOuds in southern Africa) investigates the role of aerosols on the regional climate of southern Africa, a unique environment where natural and anthropogenic aerosols […]
Context and objective As the historical cradle of many civilisations, the Mediterranean is a region of major geostrategic interest with considerable environmental, political and societal challenges. However, it is a […]
STRATEOLE-2 is a project designed to study atmospheric events above the equator. The project is led by France and includes researchers in the United States and other countries. It consists […]
Are marine living microorganisms influencing clouds? In the 1970’s, scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis developed a new paradigm for how we view our planet, termed the Gaia Principle. In […]
Context: Lidar observations are the only means to reproduce highly resolved vertical profiles of key atmospheric parameters such as water vapour content, temperature, aerosols, and clouds. They also have great […]
The PEGASUS (Portable Gas and Aerosol Sampling Units) mobile field platform is a set of two mobile units for the sampling and analysis of aerosols and atmospheric gases. The development […]
The objective of MAP-IO is to study the composition of the atmosphere and the ocean-atmosphere processes that have an impact on regional climate and numerical weather prediction.This scientific programme is […]
The PANAME (PAris region urbaN Atmospheric observations and models for Multidisciplinary rEsearch) initiative is a coordinating effort involving several ongoing multidisciplinary research projects that aim to gain a better understanding […]
Over five years from 2013 to 2018, the DACCIWA project (Dynamics-Aerosol-Chemistry-Cloud Interactions in West Africa, funded by the EU) worked with partners in the region to improve understanding of the […]
Over past years CNRM has developed with support from AERIS/ICARE the AERUS-GEO suite of Aerosols and Surface properties products (https://www.icare.univ-lille.fr/projects/user-driven-projects/aerus-geo/). Initially aimed at providing a daily averaged Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from SEVIRI sensors aboard the MSG satelliteseries, the project is now about to provide retrievals of aerosol properties at 15-min intervals thanks to the new i-AERUS-GEO algorithm (currently under validation).
POLDER (POLarization and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectances) instrument analyses the intensity and direction of light reflected by the Earth and its atmosphere, as well as its polarization, a physical characteristic describing how waves propagate. Such measurements reveal some interesting properties of clouds and aerosols, thereby telling us more about how they affect climate. Designed and developed by CNES, in close collaboration with the LOA atmospheric optics laboratory in Lille, the POLDER instrument is mainly dedicated to the study the of the clouds and aerosols properties, but it also provides valuable information on the directionality of terrestrial reflectances and on the ocean colour. It has been the first space instrument to provide global and systematic spectral, directional and polarization measurements of radiation reflected from the Earth and atmosphere.
The POAM instruments were developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to measure the vertical distribution in the atmosphere of ozone, water vapour and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), as well […]
The SAGE II instrument was developed by NASA to provide the scientific community with a global and long-term description of the distribution of aerosols, ozone, water vapour and NO2. It […]
Calipso is a joint Earth science mission between NASA and CNES dedicated to the measure of the vertical distributions as well as of the optical and physical properties of aerosols and clouds in the atmosphere, which influence the Earth’s radiation balance. For this purpose, it combines an active lidar instrument with passive infrared and visible imagers.
CloudSat is a NASA satellite. It is studying clouds in detail to better characterize the role they play in regulating Earth’s climate. It is providing a global survey of the vertical structure and overlap of cloud systems and their liquid and ice-water contents.
ACTRIS is a European research infrastructure that coordinates the acquisition and dissemination of measurements for the characterisation of ‘short-lived’ components of the atmosphere.The themes covered by this infrastructure are : […]
The GARRLiC algorithm provides micro-physical and optical aerosol properties, inverting simultaneously sun/sky radiometer and lidar ground-based observations. This synergistic approach can provide column-integrated parameters, like the particle volume size distribution, […]
The main goal of ECCAD (Emissions of atmospheric Compounds and Compilation of Ancillary Data) is to provide scientific and policy users with datasets of surface emissions of atmospheric compounds, and […]
The project EUROCHAMP-2020 aims at further integrating the most advanced European atmospheric simulation chambers into a world-class infrastructure for research and innovation. The project is composed by a coordinated set […]
The project IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) is an European Research Infrastructure (ESFRI Roadmap 2006) conducting global longterm observations of atmospheric composition (reactives and greenhouse gases, aerosols, […]
The project INDAAF (International Network to study Deposition and Atmospheric composition in Africa) is a programme dedicated to the long-term monitoring of the atmospheric composition and of the atmospheric deposition […]
The project The NDACC (Network for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change), formerly NDSC (Network for Detection of Stratospheric Change), is an international network for long-term monitoring of the stratosphere and […]