Publications Repository - Gdańsk University of Technology

Mercury contamination in the Great Lakes continues to have important public health and wildlife ecotoxicology impacts, and atmospheric deposition is a significant ongoing loading pathway. The objective of this study was to estimate the amount and source-attribution for atmospheric mercury deposition to each lake, information needed to prioritize amelioration efforts. A new global, Eulerian version of the HYSPLIT-Hg model was used to simulate the 2005 global atmospheric transport and deposition of mercury to the Great Lakes. In addition to the base case, 10 alternative model configurations were used to examine sensitivity to uncertainties in atmospheric mercury chemistry and surface exchange. A novel atmospheric lifetime analysis was used to characterize fate and transport processes within the model. Model-estimated wet deposition and atmospheric concentrations of gaseous elemental mercury (Hg(0)) were generally within ~10% of measurements in the Great Lakes region. The model overestimated non-Hg(0) concentrations by a factor of 2–3, similar to other modeling studies.

Authors

• Mark Cohen,
• Roland R. Draxler,
• Richard S. Artz,
• Pierrette Blanchard,
• Thomas M. Holsen,
• Daniel A. Jaffe,
• Paul Kelley,
• Hang Lei,
• Christopher P. Loughner,
• Winston T. Luke,
• Seth N. Lyman,
• David Niemi,
• prof. dr hab. inż. Józef Pacyna link open in new tab ,
• Martin Pilote,
• Laurier Poissant,
• Dominique Ratte,
• Xinrong Ren,
• Frits Steenhuisen,
• Alexandra Steffen,
• Rob Tordon,
• Simon J. Wilson