Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research

Introduction and Overview

In the outskirts of Leipzig, on the campus of the former Academy of Sciences, in close neighborhood of the Environmental Research Center, other research establishments and businesses you find the Institute for Tropospheric Research. It was founded in 1991 for the investigation of physical and chemical processes in the polluted troposphere (roughly the first 10 km of our atmosphere).

Meanwhile a well-defined and globally unique research profile emerged with a focus on aerosols, i.e. small airborne particles and clouds. Despite their minute absolute amount aerosols and clouds are essential parts of the atmosphere because they control the budgets of energy, water and trace substances of the Earth System. The research interest in these highly disperse systems is stimulated foremost by their potential change through human activities. These system changes feed back into the anthroposphere not only through regional and global climate change but also directly through health effects of inhaled haze and fog particles.

Despite strong connections between humans, aerosols, and clouds important physico-chemical processes of aerosol and cloud formation and the relationships with climate and health are poorly understood. This limitation is mainly due to analytical difficulties with the very small samples and with the complex behavior of tropospheric multiphase systems, in which individual processes seldom can be distinguished. In climate research this limitation is reflected in much larger uncertainties in predicted anthropogenic aerosol and cloud effects in comparison to numbers published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for additional greenhouse gases.

Rapid advances in our understanding of tropospheric multiphase processes and an application of this process understanding to the prediction of the consequences of human impacts can only be expected from concerted approaches from several directions. Consequently, the Institute for Tropospheric Research conducts field studies in several polluted regions parallel to the development of analytical methods for aerosol and cloud research.

These tools are not only applied in field experiments but also in extensive laboratory investigations, which form a second major activity. 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.

Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research
Permoserstraße 15
04318 Leipzig
Tel: +49 (0)341 / 235 - 2321
Fax: +49 (0)341 / 235 - 2361

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Further Information: www.tropos.de/