Investigation of radiative impacts of mineral dust: Implications for climate change and remote sensing

This thesis focuses on the study of atmospheric soil dust and has two main goals: The first one is to investigate the radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere and at the surface as well as the radiative heating rates caused by dust to improve the prediction of the dust radiative impacts upon the climate system. We perform the comparative analysis of the radiative effects of dust originating from two main sources: Asian and African regions. Since each region has different physical and meteorological features, dust properties are highly dependent on the source of origin. Therefore, an understanding of the regional dust impacts is an important step towards better prediction of the global radiative forcing of climate.; The second goal of my study is to aid to the interpretation of satellite remote sensing by determining the main sources of errors in the aerosol retrieval techniques. In particular, we address the importance of the vertical distribution of aerosols and clouds for the retrieval of aerosol optical depths from satellite observations at visible wavelengths. In addition, the capability of detecting dust from the TOMS satellite platform operating at UV wavelengths is examined using theoretical modeling. We also explore whether the combination of collocated UV ground-based and satellite observations allows constraining the dust optical properties.; We conclude that, even by taking into account the composition and vertical distribution of aerosols and clouds, reliable quantification of dust properties from satellite remote sensors remains an unresolved issue.