Atmospheric Electricity and Aerosol-Cloud Interactions in Earth's Atmosphere

Firstly, atmospheric ions play an important role in the fair weather electricity in Earth's atmosphere. Small ions, or charged molecular clusters, carry electric currents in the atmosphere. These small ions are continuously present, and their lifetime in lower atmosphere is about one minute. It's essential to find out a connection between the production rate of cluster ions, ion-ion recombination, and ion-aerosol attachment, and their ambient concentrations, in order to understand electrical properties of air. Secondly, atmospheric ions are important for Earth's climate, due to their potential role in secondary aerosol formation, which can lead to increased number of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), which in turn can change the cloud properties. Our aim is to quantify the connections between these two important roles of air ions based on field observations.