Climate Change aerosol particles, direct effects

As discussed in Section C.la, sea salt particles in the marine boundary layer have been shown to likely play a major role in backscattering of solar radiation (Murphy et al., 1998), i.e., to the direct effect of aerosol particles. However, they also contribute to the indirect effect involving cloud formation, since they can also act as CCN. Since such particles are a natural component of the marine atmosphere, their contribution will not play a role in climate change, unless their concentration were somehow to be changed by anthropogenic activities, e.g., through changes in wind speed over the... 

A controversy with possibly far-reaching consequences concerns the impact of atmospheric particles on the earth s climate. Temperature is one of the most easily monitored indicators of climatic change. Among the many discussions of the effects of aerosols on the global mean temperature, we direct the reader to the monograph by Twomey (1977) and the paper by Toon and Pollack (1980), from which some of the following is taken. 

The climatic effect of the smoke aerosols is beyond current understanding because of the complex nature of the interactions involved. Aerosols can influence climate directly by changing Earth s radiation balance. They reflect sunlight back into space. Smoke particles also contain black (elemental) C, which may strongly absorb sunlight and thus cause a heating of the atmosphere and less penetration of... 

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