Stratospheric aerosols play an important role in the climate system by affecting the Earth's radiative budget. In this article we present the newly developed LMDZ-S3A model and assess its performance against observations in periods of low and high aerosol loading. The model may serve as a tool to study the climate impacts of volcanic eruptions, as well as the deliberate injection of aerosols into the stratosphere, which has been proposed as a method of geoengineering to abate global warming.