This comprehensive text outlines the principles underlying our current knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the lower and middle atmospheres. Written to allow a physics or chemistry major without prior knowledge of atmospheric science to enter the subject at a fairly advanced level, it includes an introduction which outlines the subject from the formation of the solar system to the state of the atmosphere at present. The thermodynamics of an atmosphere in local thermodynamic equilibrium is treated systematically, and the fundamental radiative processes of scattering and absorption are...