Today, the research interest in these highly disperse systems is partly due to the possible influence of human activities, partly to understand basic physical and chemical mechanism in particle formation and processing.
Human effects may happen through regional and global climate change, changes of the hydrological cycle and via health effects caused by inhaled particles and fog droplets.
Consequently, the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research conducts field studies in polluted regions parallel to the development of analytical methods for aerosol and cloud research.
These tools are also applied in extensive laboratory investigations, which form a second major activity. In this regard TROPOS operates a cloud laboratory amongst others where fundamental cloud processes and the human impact on clouds are simulated.
A third and equally important approach consists of the formulation and application of numerical models that reach from process models to regional simulations of the formation, transformation and effects of tropospheric multiphase systems.
