Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Markku Kulmala calls for continuous, comprehensive monitoring of interactions between the planet’s surface and atmosphere. Climate change. Water and food security. Urban air pollution. These environmental grand challenges are all linked, yet each is studied separately. Interactions between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere influence climate, air quality and water cycles. Changes in one affect the others. For example, increasing carbon dioxide enhances photosynthesis. As they grow, plants withdraw greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but they also release volatile organic compounds such as monoterpenes. These speed up the formation of aerosol particles, which reflect sunlight back into space. Our actions — such as emission-control policies, urbanization and forestry — also affect the atmosphere, land and seas1–5.