Advances in Aerosol Microphysics and Chemistry and Their Links to Climate Change and Health

Aerosols can cool the Earth through both radiative effects via direct light absorption or scattering and indirect cloud albedo effects. At the same time, they can be harmful to human health when inhaled. Given these multi-dimensional impacts of aerosols, it is essential to integrally understand both the climate and health outcomes when designing climate mitigation or air-pollution control strategies. However, substantial uncertainty remains in our understanding of how aerosols affect climate and health, due to incomplete constrains on key aerosol chemical and microphysical processes, aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions, and exposure-response relationships for PM2.5 related mortality and morbidity. As a result, it remains challenging to quantify aerosol radiative forcing and to robustly assess aerosol-related health impacts, which in turn complicates the design of coordinated policies that reduce PM2.5 pollution while minimizing the climate penalty.This Research Topic serves as a platform to advance our understanding of aerosol microphysics and chemistry. We also welcome studies that assess how advances in aerosol microphysics and chemistry shape aerosol pollution and its associated climate and health effects. More broadly, we welcome work examining how other important factors influence aerosol pollution and related climate and health impacts, such as anthropogenic and natural emissions, climate warming, underlying-surface conditions, and anthropogenic heat. Contributions drawing on field campaigns, satellite observations, reanalysis dataset, and regional or global models, as well as studies leveraging other effective datasets and/or innovative methods, are encouraged.We welcome submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following topics:• Aerosol microphysical processes and their effects on climate and health, including new particle formation and the sources and transformations of nucleating species; aerosol growth/evaporation kinetics; aerosol optics as key species evolve; and dry/wet deposition under different aerosol compositions, meteorological conditions, and land-surface types; and other related processes.• Aerosol chemistry and their effects on climate and health, including multiphase formation and aging of organic aerosol; equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics of inorganic aerosol formation; aqueous-phase interactions with both organic and inorganic aerosol formation; cloud processing of aerosol components; photolytic transformation of aerosol components; and other related processes.• PM2.5 pollution changes, their climate effects, and associated health impacts across historical and future periods, driven by multiple factors such as changes in anthropogenic and natural emissions (e.g., wildfire and dust), climate warming, shifts in surface type/land cover, anthropogenic heat, and other factors.• Assessment of health effects associated with aerosol mass, number concentration, and chemical composition; assessment of aerosol toxicity; and assessment of microenvironment-based aerosol exposure. Topic editors: Da Gao, Bin Zhao, Shengqian Zhou, Yicong He Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79110/advances-in-aerosol-microphysics-and-chemistry-and-their-links-to-climate-change-and-health