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The aerosol substance of the atmosphere directly affects processes such as the scattering and reflection of solar radiation, as well as the Earth's own radiation. Furthermore, it affects the formation of clouds, despite the fact that the scatter of the volume of the particle concentration in the atmosphere is from 10 * -10 to 10 * -14 to 1 m3 of air.
The presence of aerosol impurities in the lower atmosphere contributes to greater stability of cloudiness, increases the duration of their presence in the atmosphere, and also affects the growth of the number of drops that make up the cloud. The stability of the cloud is also determined by its phase state. It is believed that crystalline clouds are the most stable, and mixed phase clouds - most active in the case where the inside of the same cloud at different altitudes or horizontally spaced present as clusters of water droplets and ice crystals. Mixed clouds are unstable, since the drops evaporate or freeze, passing into a more constant - crystalline - state. These transitions depend on the temperature of the cloud.
The processes of cloud formation take scales from micrometers to several thousand kilometers. The same can be said about the time scales of cloud formation processes; they are measured from a few seconds to weeks, when the formation, degradation and destruction of atmospheric formations takes place.
In the atmosphere, tropospheric (ground) and stratospheric aerosols are released. The boundary between these aerosols passes at an altitude of 15 km. Depending on the processes of their formation, there is widespread known typology of tropospheric and stratospheric clouds.