Within the Swiss Atmospheric Radiation Monitoring program (CHARM) the Swiss Meteorological Institute-MeteoSwiss operates a network of presently six Sun photometer stations. Aerosol optical depths (AOD) at 368, 500, and 778 nm were determined from measurements of the relative direct solar irradiance, primarily to provide climatological information relevant in particular to climate change studies. The six instruments are located at various sites representative of high and low altitudes at the north and south part of the Alps in areas free from urban pollution in Switzerland. AOD time series of recordings back to 1991 are discussed, when data were first collected at Davos. An important aerosol layer is often present over stations at lower sites, showing seasonal variability and regional differences for the observed tropospheric aerosols. A classification scheme for synoptic weather types was applied to separate the AOD data into groups corresponding to different atmospheric transport conditions. On average, lower AODs are measured within advective weather situations than within convective ones. However, at the high Alpine sites such a classification is incomplete for AOD characterization due to orographically induced vertical motion. Monthly averaged values of AOD at 500 nm ranged from 0.05 during winter up to 0.3 in summer. The scale height of the aerosol optical depth is found to be 1--2 km depending on season. The high mountain sites are more suitable to the study stratospheric aerosols, for example, the change of the aerosol content and of its size distribution due to Mount Pinatubo eruption was clearly identified at Davos. In 1996 the aerosol optical depth returned to pre-Pinatubo values. Minimum AODs of ≈0.004--0.007 measured at 500 nm in 1997 are in good agreement with widely reported aerosol optical depth measurements of the stratospheric background aerosols. Besides the Pinatubo-affected period aerosol characterization by means of the ¿ngstr¿m power law exhibits on average a mean wavelength exponent of 1.3--1.8. A climatology of the AOD data obtained between 1994 and 2000 in both space and time has been established. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union