On my way to the exploration of the world through physics, I met a unique constellation of individuals, that also are exceptional scientists. I had the very first kickoff with Prof. Ludger Woeste, Dr. Kamil Stelmaszczyk and Dr. Steffen Frey. During my master work I operated the LIDAR station on the Berlin's lighthouse of the Charité building. Multi-wavelength laser beams aided me to characterize atmospheric aerosols and their sizes. I gained new perspectives when I landed in Bremen and I moved away from ground-based remote sensing toward spaceborne satellite science. During my promotion, I delved into UV-Vis-NIR radiative transfer and massive computational inverse problems, trained by Dr. Alexander A. Kokhanovsky, Dr. Marco Vountas, Dr. Vladimir V. Rozanov, Dr. Wolfgang von Hoyningen-Huene, under the guidance of Prof. John Burrows. Specifically, my tasks have been, and still are, not only the development of algorithms for the vertical profiling of atmospheric particulate scattering layers, consisting these of clouds or aerosols, but also the assessment of their long-term impact into the climate system and the hydrological cycle through the mutual interactions governed by thermodynamics.