Uncertainties in data on organic aerosols

Abstract

Organic aerosols are gaining increasing attention because of their importance in studies ofradiative forcing of climate. However, there is a potential for large and unquantified biases inmost of the published data, which has been derived using variations on the evolved gas analysismethod (EGA).We argue that the magnitude of these putative uncertainties makes it impossibleboth to test hypotheses concerning the variation of organic carbon (OC) with altitude and todevelop realistic models of radiative climate forcing.