Thornton Group Department of Atmospheric Sciences University of Washington, Seattle
Group Members	Research Projects	Joel Thornton
Meeting schedule		thornton@atmos.washington.edu
Photo cour esy of

	How are human activities impacting the composition of the atmosphere on local, regional and global scales?
	Answering this question is critical for predicting future changes in pollution and climate, and depends centrally on our knowledge of the underlying chemistry. Implicitly, it also requires us to know  the natural chemical state of the atmosphere in the absence of human perturbations.
	above: Glenn Wolfe maintains the sampling inlet on the summit of Mt. Bachelor
	Photo-induced free radical gas-phase oxidation, gas-surface and gas-droplet interactions, particle nucleation and growth, among a myriad of other processes, participate in controlling the fate of human-induced emissions and thus atmospheric composition. This chemistry, coupled with atmospheric transport phenomena, makes answering the above question a challenging, yet interesting, research endeavor.
	above: Jim Kercher (left) helps change the sampling inlet on the RV Knorr somewhere in the N. Atlantic
	Current research efforts in the Thornton group are aimed at developing a detailed understanding of such processes from the molecular to the regional and global scales via a combination of fundamental laboratory studies, in situ atmospheric observations and computer modeling.