Uncertainties in data on organic aerosols

Organic aerosols are gaining increasing attention because of their importan ce in studies of radiative forcing of climate. However, there is a potentia l for large and unquantified biases in most of the published data, which ha s been derived using variations on the evolved gas analysis method (EGA). W e argue that the magnitude of these putative uncertainties makes it impossi ble both to test hypotheses concerning the variation of organic carbon (OC) with altitude and to develop realistic models of radiative climate forcing .