| Summary: | The relevance of the Arctic has become apparent in the last decades,and it is today widely agreed that this area is affected by fast and unavoidablechanges taking place at the global and local scale. The Arctic environmentis interesting from geopolitical, economic, and scientific perspectives, and thestudy of the natural components characterising the area, such as aerosols andclouds, their evolution and their response to external forcing, is of primary importance.This Dissertation contains a scientific contribution to the field of atmosphericphysics focusing on satellite measurements and ground-based instrumentsavailable at the Thule High Arctic Atmospheric Observatory (THAAO, www.thuleatmos-it.it , 76.5° N, 68.8° W, 220 m a.s.l) located near Pituffik SpaceBase, PSB (formerly known as Thule Air Base (TAB)), in northern Greenland.In particular, aerosols produced by Canadian wildfires in 2017 strongly affectedthe Arctic and reached the Pituffik area. The combined analysis of surface measurementsand satellite observations allowed us to estimate and extend the localradiative impact to a broader area. Clouds are another critical component of the Earth system from which most of the uncertainties in climate models andforecasts originate. This research exploited zenith spectral measurements conductedat THAAO to develop a retrieval algorithm for cloud optical thickness,especially when dealing with surfaces presenting high albedo, such as snow. Theresults have been compared to other methods based on different ground-basedinstruments and satellites.
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