Dear Juniors- In our study of the Earth's atmosphere, I want you to appreciate how your chemistry learning is applied in the real world. As we study the dynamics of the atmosphere, we need to understand the complex chemistry of the gases involved and how their specific properties determine how they affect us down here on Earth. Nitrogen gas, N2, is a nice, stable fairly inert gas that makes up 78% of the gas in the air, where methane, CH4, makes up only 0.00017% of the air we breathe, but has a massive impact on Earth's temperature. Further, it is easy to forget that water, H2O, is a gas as well as a liquid, and that water vapor is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, holding a lot of heat into the Earth's atmospheric envelope. Beyond just the chemical properties of these gases are the interactions between them and with incoming solar radiation, which can be observed in the complicated chemistry of stratospheric ozone which we will look at shortly. Wow, chemistry is really important and cool too!
please read these pages- Reading Assignment on Atmospheric Composition
Atmospheric motions study guide
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