The TIGERZ campaign plans to collect atmospheric data to investigate the follow research initiatives:

• Development and application of a new joint algorithm implementing an enhanced retrieval of vertically-dependent aerosol properties and surface reflectance from joint AERONET, CALIPSO, PARASOL and/or MODIS observations
• Characterization of aerosol properties (4-D validation)
• Estimation of direct radiative forcing
• Estimation of Indirect radiative forcing
• Characterization of precipitation (Validation and indirect forcing)
• Improvement of aerosol absorption surface characterization (Validation in UV-RS of organics)
• Evaluation of test inversions of microphysical properties in various concentrations of CCN
• Characterization of the vertical profile of cloud phase and particle size and relationship to aerosol concentration
• Assessment of the microphysical influence of aerosols on convective activity as well as the spatial extent of stratiform and cirrus clouds
• Evaluation of test MISR AOD comparing the retrieval sensitivity of the research algorithm to the standard algorithm
• Development of a database sufficient to test the elevated heat pump and global dimming hypotheses