The evaluation of the aerosol distribution and optical depth used to force the GFDL coupled climate model CM2.1 has shown strengths and weaknesses. In view of these weaknesses, some improvements have been performed in the new version of the GFDL climate model. These include the implementation of on-line aerosols, a new set of aerosol optical properties, the nudging of meteorological variables. We will present these new developments and show how they improve the representation of aerosol characteristics, in particular their concentration and optical depth. The comparison of the model results with multiple datasets, ground-based and satellite data, allows to quantify these improvements, and will serve as a guide through our presentation. To finish, we will discuss on-going research to solve some current limitations of the aerosol on-line model.

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