Increase in global atmospheric concentrations of mercury inferred from measurements over the Atlantic Ocean

Details Increase in global atmospheric concentrations of mercury inferred from measurements over the Atlantic Ocean Increase in global atmospheric concentrations of mercury inferred from measurements over the Atlantic Ocean

Jan 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992natur.355..434s&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 355, Issue 6359, pp. 434-437 (1992).

Physics

11

Scientific paper

ANTHROPOGENIC processes, such as coal burning, waste incineration and ore refining, are believed to contribute to the emission of mercury into the atmosphere1-5. The atmospheric concentration of mercury should therefore have increased as a consequence of increases in anthropogenic emissions3. Indeed, analyses of dated soil6, peat bog7,8 and lake-sediment records8-13 indicate that the deposition of atmospheric mercury may have doubled since the beginning of the nineteenth century. But such an increase in atmospheric mercury concentrations has so far not been detected in ice-core records14,15 (perhaps because of problems with contamination), and is not consistent with most mercury budgets2,4,5,16,17, in which natural sources are thought to dominate. Here we present measurements of total gaseous mercury over the Atlantic Ocean for 1977-90, which show that atmospheric concentrations of mercury have in fact increased by 1.46 +/-0.17% per year in the Northern Hemisphere, and by 1.17 +/-0.16% per year in the Southern Hemisphere. These rates of increase are consistent with the results of the soil, peat bog and lake-sediment analyses, and lead us to suggest that anthropogenic, rather than natural, sources are at present more important in the mercury cycle.

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