Water contributes significantly to the aerosol mass under ambient conditions of relative humidities, and thus may significantly impact their optical and radiative properties and direct effect. In the present work, the impact of the aerosol hygroscopicity on its optical properties is evaluated from a set of instrumentation located at the ACTRIS/GAW Puy de Dôme station (PdD, 1465m) over two years of measurements in 2010 and 2011. In situ size distributions, extinction and hygroscopicity measurements are combined to retrieve the aerosol refractive index, both dry and wet. For each optical property the enhancement factor (f) due to hygroscopicity can be computed using Mie calculations. The long data set available enables us to generate parameterisations of optical properties enhancement as a function of relative humidities for different aerosol types. At 90% humidity, fσsca is more than 4.4 for marine aerosol that have mixed with a pollution plume. Consequently, the aerosol radiative forcing is estimated to be 2.80 times higher at RH=90% and 1.75 times higher at ambient RH when hygroscopic growth of the aerosol is considered. For the first time this study highlight the high seasonal variability of this impact. The manuscript also presents an original method of mass inversion for volcanic aerosols with the synergy of in situ and LIDAR measurements. The calculated mass of volcanic particle transported over Clermont during the eruption of Eyjafjalla in May 2010 was up to 655±23μg.m-3.
