The VOCALS [VAMOS (Variability of the American Monsoon System) Ocean Cloud Atmosphere Land Study Regional Experiment] campaign was a large multi-national field campaign that has been established to investigate the coupled processes that control the climate of the South-East Pacific region. This includes the variety of interactions between the ocean surface, the overlying atmosphere and the neighbouring land. A particular focus for the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) aircraft studies was the sources of natural and anthropogenic aerosol and an understanding of their physical and chemical properties and a study of the interactions of this aerosol with the persistent stratocumulus cloud in the maritime atmospheric boundary layer. The campaign made use of instruments on board the FAAM BAe-146 aircraft to determine the strength and temperature dependence.