Meteo 465/565 -- The Middle Atmosphere
Important Photochemical Concepts, continued

Chemical families.

It is often convenient to group chemical species into chemical families.  Sometimes, chemical compounds are made up of species from more that one chemical family and we list them in both.

Types of gases within chemical families.

Chemicals in different chemical families often have different functions and lifetimes.  The main groupings are sources, free radicals, reservoirs, and sinks.

Chemical budgets.

Much of the recent research in the stratosphere has been to understand the chemical budgets.  By this I mean: Is the sum of all radicals, reservoirs, and sinks equal to the initial sources?  Is the observed partitioning within a chemical family as expected from photochemical transport models?  Once you understand these chemical budgets, you can say that you have a pretty good understanding of the photochemistry.