ATMS 525 Topics in atmospheric chemistry
Class Meeting Times and Location: Tuesdays 2:30-3:20, Room 406 in the Atmospheric Sciences Building

Instructor: Lyatt Jaeglé
e-mail: jaegle@atmos.washington.edu
Phone: (206) 685-2679
Office: Room 306 in the Atmospheric Sciences Building

Announcements

  • Next class Tuesday June 4: read Prinn et al., 2001. Download it here
Class Description
This course is taught in a journal club format in which we will discuss a series of papers related to tropospheric chemistry.  Each week one paper will be the topic of a focused class discussion.  The objectives of the class are the learn to critically evaluate the scientific literature, understand what we know about a certain problem, how we know about it, as well as what don't we know.

Outline of topics. 
The papers we will read will be grouped under three major topics: 

1) Tropospheric budgets of ozone, CO and NOx 

  • How much ozone in the troposphere is produced photochemically and how much is transported from the stratosphere? 
  • What are the sources of CO in the troposphere? 
  • How do we test photochemical theory and models? 
  • What are the remaining uncertainties? 
Papers: 
diam  Logan, J.A., et al., "Tropospheric Chemistry: A global perspective", Journal of Geophysical Research, 86, 7210-7254, 1981.
diam  Liu, S.C., et al., "Ozone production in the rural troposphere and the implications for regional and global ozone distributions", Journal of Geophysical Research, 92, 4191-4207, 1987.
diam  Jacob, D.J., et al., "Origin of ozone and NOx in the tropical troposphere: A photochemical analysis of aircraft osbervations over the South Atlantic basin", Journal of Geophysical Research, 101, 24.235-24,250, 1996. 

2) Is the global oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere changing? 

  • What factors control the oxidizing capacity of the troposphere? 
  • Have OH levels changed in the past 100 years? 10 years? What were the levels of OH during the last ice age? Will they change in the future? 
  • Do we really know and how can we tell? 
  • What is the controversy all about? 
Papers: 
diam  Thompson, A.M., "The oxidizing capacity of the Earth's atmosphere: Probable past and future changes", Science, 256, 1157-1165, 1992.
diam  Prinn et al., "Atmospheric trends and lifetimes of CH3CCl3 and global OH concentrations", Science, 269, 187-192, 1995.
diam  Montzka, et al., "New observational constraints for atmospheric hydroxyl on global and hemispheric scales", Science, 288, 500-503, 2000.
diam  Prinn, et al., "Evidence for substantial variations of atmospheric hydroxyl radicals in the past two decades", Science, 292, 1882, 2001.

3) Climate/chemistry interactions
Together with ATM S 591 "Special topics: Climate change 2001", Prof. Sarachik.

  • How will anthropogenic emissions change over the next 100 years?
  • How will that affect the composition of the atmosphere?
  • How will climate change impact atmospheric chemistry?
  • What are the feedbacks between atmospheric chemistry and climate change
Paper:
diam  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate change 2001: The scientific basis", Chapter 4, Atmospheric Chemistry and Greenhouse Gases, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 

Prerequisites: Some basic knowledge of atmospheric chemistry is expected (ATM S/CHEM 458 or ATM S 558). Supplementary readings will be provided as required (see optional textbook below).

Textbook (optional): D.J. Jacob, "Introduction to atmospheric chemistry" (Chapter 11), Princeton University Press, 1999.

Grading Policy: Credit/No credit.
 

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 Last Updated:
04/02/2002

Contact the instructor at: jaegle@atmos.washington.edu