Aerosol and CCN Distributions over Europe

Aerosols indirectly effect the climate through the modification of clouds, therefore an accurate representation of the spatial and temporal variability of aerosols is needed. The Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO) Multi-Scale Chemistry Aerosol Transport (MUSCAT) modeling system was used to simulate the emission and transport of anthropogenic and natural aerosols in Europe. The aerosols fields indicate there is a large amount of temporal and spatial variability in aerosol concentrations. Several parameterisations are applied to various aerosol types to estimate the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN) number concentrations. These parameterisations allow the aerosol effect on cloud formation to be investigated. A comparison of the parameterised CCN and IN concentrations with observations is performed with a series of observational platforms.