A short account of the origins of this book will explain its purpose. In the 1970s I coauthored (with John M. Wallace) a textbook for senior undergraduates and first-year graduate students entitled Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey (Academic Press, 1977). At the time that text was written it was not considered necessary to include a chapter on atmospheric chemistry. By the early 1990s, when we began to think about a second edition of Atmospheric Science, the importance of atmospheric chemistry was such that it was inconceivable that such a book would not include a substantial chapter on this subject.

In the intervening years I had introduced a section on atmospheric chemistry into the survey course taken by all first-year graduate students in the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Washington. I quickly discovered, however, that many of the students either had no previous instruction in chemistry or had long since forgotten what little they had known. I therefore wrote an (unpublished) primer on physical chemistry for these students; the present book grew out of that primer.

Reviewed herein are some of the fundamental concepts associated with chemical equilibrium, chemical thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, aqueous solutions, acid–base chemistry, oxidation–reduction reactions and photochemistry, all of which are essential to an understanding of atmospheric chemistry. The approach is primarily from the macroscopic viewpoint, which provides the tools needed by the pragmatist. A deeper understanding requires extensive treatment of the electronic structure of matter and chemical bonding, topics that are beyond the scope of this introductory text.