Five-year records of mercury wet deposition flux at GMOS sites in the Northern and Southern hemispheres

Francesca Sprovieri , Nicola Pirrone , Mariantonia Bencardino , Francesco d'Amore , Helene Angot (1) , Carlo Barbante , Ernst-Günther Brunke , Flor Arcega-Cabrera , Warren Cairns , Sara Comero , María del Carmen Diéguez , Aurélien Dommergue (1) , Ralf Ebinghaus , Xin Bin Feng , Xuewu Fu , Patricia Elizabeth Garcia , Bernd Manfred Gawlik , Ulla Hageström , Katarina Hansson , Milena Horvat , Jože Kotnik , Casper Labuschagne , Olivier Magand (1) , Lynwill Martin , Nikolay Mashyanov , Thumeka Mkololo , John Munthe , Vladimir Obolkin , Martha Ramirez Islas , Fabrizio Sena , Vernon Somerset , Pia Spandow , Massimiliano Vardè , Chavon Walters , Ingvar Wängberg , Andreas Weigelt , Xu Yang , Hui Zhang

1 IGE - Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement

The atmospheric deposition of mercury (Hg) occurs via several mechanisms, including dry and wet scavenging by precipitation events. In an effort to understand the atmospheric cycling and seasonal depositional characteristics of Hg, wet deposition samples were collected for approximately 5 years at 17 selected GMOS monitoring sites located in the Northern and Southern hemispheres in the framework of the Global Mercury Observation System (GMOS) project. Total mercury (THg) exhibited annual and seasonal patterns in Hg wet deposition samples. Interannual differences in total wet deposition are mostly linked with precipitation volume, with the greatest deposition flux occurring in the wettest years. This data set provides a new insight into baseline concentrations of THg concentrations in precipitation worldwide, particularly in regions such as the Southern Hemisphere and tropical areas where wet deposition as well as atmospheric Hg species were not investigated before, opening the way for future and additional simultaneous measurements across the GMOS network as well as new findings in future modeling studies.

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]

Francesca Sprovieri, Nicola Pirrone, Mariantonia Bencardino, Francesco d'Amore, Helene Angot, et al.. Five-year records of mercury wet deposition flux at GMOS sites in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2017, 17, pp.2689-2708. ⟨10.5194/acp-17-2689-2017⟩. ⟨insu-03706528⟩