Welcome to the course website for EASC10102, Earth's Atmospheric Composition. It contains all the material you need to complete the course.

• We will explore the chemical composition of the atmosphere, with an emphasis on the troposphere that includes the air in which we live and breath, and the surface processes and atmospheric chemistry and transport that determine its variability.
• We will cover the fundamentals of atmospheric chemistry (kinetics, photolysis, spectroscopy) so there is no chemistry pre-requisite to this course. The course is focused on delivering content using online material, in-class interaction and problem sets.
• We will make use of current news, as appropriate.

Course administrator: Katerina Sykioti (0131 650 5430)

Recent new items

Week 1: Introduction/course overview/atmospheric properties/simple models

Week 2: Stratospheric chemistry

Week 3: Tropospheric chemistry 1 - CO, CH4, nitrogen oxides, ozone

Week 4: Tropospheric chemistry 2 - ozone pollution, acid rain

Week 5: Tropospheric chemistry 3 - emissions & dry/wet deposition

Week 6: Tropospheric chemistry 4 - aerosols

Week 7: Air quality and human health

Week 8: Biogeochemical cycles

Week 9: Atmospheric chemistry and transport

We are using Jupyter notebooks for the computer labs. We have three one-hour lab sessions. No prior computing experience necessary.

School of GeoSciences Jupyter Service: https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/notebook/hub/home

You will be able to download a personal copy of the notebook to work individually in class.

Getting started:

1. Download a local copy of [insert lab #].ipynb
2. Login into the GeoSciences Jupyter Service using your UUN
3. Click on "My Server"
4. Click on "Upload" and point to your local copy of the *.ipynb file
5. Click on blue "Upload" button to confirm
6. Click on the filename in your notebook list. This should pop open a new browser window
7. Read the introductory instructions carefully before working through the notebook.

The learning objectives for computing practicals:

Overarching objectives:

• reinforce key concepts introduced in the lectures
• appreciate information provided by data and models

Specific objectives:

Laboratory 1 (Week 3): Orientation. E-folding lifetimes. Mass balance.

Laboratory 2 (Week 5): Horizontal and vertical distributions of atmospheric CO2; comparing models with data

Laboratory 3 (Week 7): Analysis of PM2.5 over Edinburgh UK, Delhi India, and Beijing China; relating changes to PM2.5 to human health.

You can can download these files from github:

"git clone https://github.com/paulpalmerlab/eac" or go to https://github.com/paulpalmerlab/eac and download a zip file containing the code.

Lecture times: Mondays 1210-1300; Tuesdays 1510-1600.

Revision classes: Weeks 3, 5, 7, and 9 on Tuesdays 1610-1700.

Computer practicals (NOTE TIMES): Week 3 on Tuesday 1300-1400 and Weeks 5, and 7 on Tuesdays 1510-1600.

• Monday lectures are in Room 304B, Grant Institute, King's Buildings;
• Tuesday lectures are in G.31, Murchison House, King's Buildings;
• Revision classes are in Room 304B, Grant Institute, King's Buildings;
• Computer practicals are in 3210 JCMB, King's Buildings. Using Jupyter notebooks.

A summary of the 19/20 teaching semester 2 for this course is shown below.

• The course will be assessed by a take-home 500-word research article (25%) and a final exam (75%). Guidance is provided online (and in week 5) for the article.
• Past exam papers for this course. [Need to be on University network]
• Online pop quizzes (weeks 3, 6, 7, and 9) will supplement the formal teaching. These will be used as teaching aids and supported by compulsory revision classes led by a teaching assistant.

I use an inverted lecture model in which core (book-work) material is delivered on-line before the physical lecture that can then focus on understanding material, current science and problem solving (including computer practicals that do not require knowledge of coding).

We will make use of Tophat, which you may have used in previous classes. It will be used in lectures times and revision classes. Below are the relevant codes.

COURSE JOIN CODE: 216370

REVISION QUIZ JOIN CODE: 090639

• Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry by Jacob (Recommended)
• The Atmosphere: A Very Short Introduction by Palmer (Recommended as a short and accessible overview of the subject that puts this course into a wider context)
• Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by Seinfeld and Pandis (Further Reading).