Advances in Remote Sensing of Aerosol Optical Properties and the Effects on Radiation

Dear Colleagues,

The potential impacts of aerosol radiative force on the climate have generated considerable recent interest. In general, atmospheric aerosols affect the climate in two ways: through the so-called direct effect, which is primarily human activity due to scatter incoming solar radiation, as a few aerosol types can absorb solar radiation, and through the indirect effect that plays a role in cloud formation because aerosols may serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN), affecting the properties of clouds. Thus, when evaluating the effects of aerosols on a climate system, the aerosol properties have to be strongly taken into account. Uncertainties in the understanding of their both effects (direct and indirect) limit our knowledge about climate change. In fact, aerosol radiative effects and their relationship to climate change remain inaccurate (IPCC 2013), and this uncertainty is more considerable in some ranges of the solar spectrum, for example, in the visible range. Solar radiation modification approaches, if implemented, introduce a widespread range of new risks to people and ecosystems, and these risks are not well understood (IPCC 2023). Thus, it is very important to publish research on how aerosols affect solar radiation in different wavelength ranges.

Assessing the radiative effects of aerosols at various sites worldwide is crucial to contribute to the knowledge about climate change. This Special Issue aims to publish studies focused on the interactions between aerosols and radiation in different spectral ranges. Thus, aerosol radiative forcing (ARF) and aerosol forcing efficiency (AFE) are widely used to quantify and compare the potential impact that aerosols have on the climate, since ARF is defined as a change in the Earth's radiation balance due to a perturbation of anthropogenic or natural origin. To achieve this main goal, advancing our knowledge on aerosol properties is very important in order to quantify these radiative balance variations due to aerosol changes. Using remote sensing to obtain aerosol properties contributes to decreasing the uncertainties about the knowledge of aerosols and consequently to propose strategies to limit climate change.

Research papers:

• Characterizing aerosol properties using solar irradiance measurements;
• Reconstruction of long-term aerosol properties series with solar radiation records;
• Remote sensing of aerosol properties using data lidar;
• Estimation of aerosol radiative forcing for photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and other ranges of wavelengths;
• Determination of aerosol optical properties by a sky camera;
• Global and diffuse solar irradiance during dust episodes;
• Trends in solar radiation/aerosols interaction;
• Remote sensing of aerosols and radiation from satellites;
• Monitoring of aerosols and surface insolation;
• Aerosol effects on solar irradiance under pollution episodes;
• Radiative effects of aerosols for all sky conditions;
• Aerosol radiative forcing through radiative transfer calculations;
• Comparisons of aerosol radiative forcing using measurements and radiative transfer models.

Dr. Inmaculada Foyo-Moreno
Prof. Dr. Maria João Costa
Dr. Maria Pilar Utrillas
Prof. Dr. Juan Luis Guerrero Rascado
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• remote sensing
• interaction aerosol radiation
• aerosol radiative forcing
• aerosol properties
• solar radiation
• atmospheric radiative transfer