Natural aerosols and climate: Understanding the unpolluted atmosphere to better understand the impacts of pollution

Natural aerosols define a pre-industrial baseline state from which the magnitude of anthropogenic aerosol effects on climate are calculated and are a major component of the large uncertainty in anthropogenic aerosol-cloud radiative forcing. This uncertainty would be reduced if aerosol environments unperturbed by air pollution could be studied in the present-day atmosphere, but the pervasiveness of air pollution makes identification of unperturbed regions difficult. This study uses global model simulations to show where aerosol concentrations have remained similar between 1750 and 2000. Four suitable measurement stations are then identified in regions with a pristine-like aerosol state.