Atmospheric Chemistry
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced course on the chemical processes that determine the abundance of trace species in Earth's atmosphere. Lectures and course materials cover photochemistry, kinetics, and thermodynamics as they apply to atmospheric reactions, along with stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric oxidation chemistry, photochemical smog, aerosol chemistry, and the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and other climate forcers. The course emphasizes how human activity alters air quality and climate through these chemical pathways. Materials include lecture notes and problem sets drawn from MIT's Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences departments, released under a Creative Commons license and free to access. No certificate is offered, consistent with OpenCourseWare's model of publishing complete course content without enrollment.