Research 
Prof. Toohey's research addresses the role of trace gases and aerosols on Earth's atmosphere. He primarily develops and deploys instruments for in situ measurements from the ground, balloons, and aircraft.  He has participated in over 70 field campaigns to examine topics such as stratospheric ozone depletion over the Antarctic and Arctic, the role of aerosols in modification of cloud properties, and exploiting observations of isotolopologues of water vapor for studying cloud microphysics. In addition to many sites throughout the continental United States, he has conducted fieldwork in Alaska, Hawaii, New England, Antarctica, Norway, Sweden, Spitsbergen, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Chile, South Korea, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  For more details, see Web of Science, Google Scholar, Academia.edu, ResearchGate. His lab is located in a far remote corner on the second floor of the Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Laboratory (SEEL) on East Campus. Most recently, Prof. Toohey developed an ultra-lightweight (<1-kg) laser-absorption spectrometer for measurements of water vapor on high-altitude balloons.

Teaching
Prof. Toohey's first experience as a lecturer was teaching a mechanics laboratory for non-majors at Cal State Fullerton in 1980 while studying physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Since then he has taught two dozen different courses in fields ranging from fundamental physics and chemistry, remote sensing, and instrumentation lab, to global ecology, sustainability, and science policy. Many of these courses he developed and taught for the first time. A full list as of 2025 can be found here.  Prof. Toohey has also taught on Semester at Sea and while serving as an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He is currently completing a compilation of all of his lecture notes, slides, homeworks, and exams, of which there several thousand pages. In 2022 he edited a complete set of video lectures for the class he has taught most often, "Our Changing Environment", an introduction to Earth System Science, which dates back to courses he taught at Harvard and UC Irvine.

Science Policy
Prof. Toohey has been involved with issues of science policy dating back to his work on ozone-depleting substances in the 1980s and 1990s. He has been a co-author of multiple assessments of stratospheric ozone and impacts of aircraft on air chemistry and climate. In 2011-2012 he served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, working on issues related to economics and energy security for APEC. He organized a high-level meeting on Open Governance and Economic Growth, chaired by the Secretary of State, served as a delegate for the United States at the 10th APEC Energy Ministerial Meeting, and organized  an APEC Workshop in Singapore on the use of observations to address resilience and disaster response. In 2019 he co-authored an article calling for awareness of the role of increased emissions of rockets on stratospheric circulation, and he is interviewed often about the potential impacts of space launch activities on ozone.

Maybe of further interest
Watch: Understanding Climate Change and the Redistribution of Heat, Winds, Water, and Worries (U.S. Center, Doha Conference, November 2012) 
Watch: The Canary in the Coal Mine: Why the Stratosphere is Still Relevant (U.S. Dept. of State, April 2012)
Read: The Coming Surge of Rocket Emissions (EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, September 24, 2019)

This page was last updated February 23, 2025

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