Arctic contaminants and climate change

Tjarda J. Roberts (1)

1 LPC2E - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace

In a recent Letter1, Ma et al. analysed eight persistent organic pollutants (POPs) at an Arctic monitoring station (Mount Zeppelin, 474 metres above sea level, Svalbard). They identified inclines in the latter parts of the linearly detrended concentration time-series (1993–2009). Their interpretation is that many POPs (besides the more volatile polychlorinated biphenyls and hexachlorobenzene) have become remobilized from Arctic repositories into the atmosphere as a consequence of climate change. However, it should be emphasized that other factors can cause the reported inclines, which reflect nonlinearities (or a degree of curvature) within the data.

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

Tjarda J. Roberts. Arctic contaminants and climate change. Nature Climate Change, 2012, 2 (12), pp.829. ⟨10.1038/nclimate1747⟩. ⟨insu-01258668⟩