In view of both the climatic relevance of aerosols and the fact that aerosol burdens in central Europe are heavily impacted by anthropogenic sources, this study is focused on estimating the regional-scale direct radiative effect of aerosols in Austria. The aerosol data (over 80 samples in total) were collected during measurement campaigns at five sampling sites: the urban areas of Vienna, Linz, and Graz and on Mt. Rax (1644 m, regional background aerosol) and Mt. Sonnblick (3106 m, background aerosol). Aerosol mass size distributions were obtained with eight-stage (size range: 0.06--16 ¿m diameter) and six-stage (size range 0.1--10 ¿m) low-pressure cascade impactors. The size-segregated samples were analyzed for total carbon (TC), black carbon (BC), and inorganic ions. The aerosol at these five locations is compared in terms of size distributions, optical properties, and direct forcing. Mie calculations are performed for the dry aerosol at 60 wavelengths in the range 0.3--40 ¿m. Using mass growth factors determined earlier, the optical properties are also estimated for higher relative humidities (60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). A box model was used to estimate direct radiative forcing (DRF). The presence of absorbing species (BC) was found to reduce the cooling effect of the aerosols. The water-soluble substances dominate radiative forcing at the urban sites, while on Rax and Sonnblick BC plays the most important role. This result can be explained by the effect of the surface albedo, which is much lower in the urban regions (0.16) than at the ice and snow-covered mountain sites. Shortwave (below 4 ¿m) and longwave surface albedo values for ice were 0.35 and 0.5, while for snow surface albedo, values of 0.8 (shortwave) and 0.5 (longwave) were used. In the case of dry aerosol, especially for urban sites, the unidentified material may contribute a large part to the forcing. Depending on the sampling site the estimated forcing gets more negative with increasing humidity. When humidity changes from 50% to 90%, the factor of forcing change for Graz is about 3 times larger than that for Linz (3.8) and about 5 times greater than that for Vienna (2.4). At the mountain stations the change in forcing with increasing humidity is much less pronounced because of the high surface albedo. The influence of the aerosol mixing state on the single-scattering albedo as well as on DRF is investigated for all sampling sites. As expected, the single-scattering albedo was found to have lower values for internal mixture than for external mixture.