Atmospheric mercury-a review

作者：Oliver Lindqvist, Henning Rodhe · 发表于：Tellus B · 年份：1985 · DOI：10.3402/tellusb.v37i3.15010 · 被引用次数：392 · 研究领域：Mercury impact and mitigation studies

An attempt is made to assess present knowledge about atmospheric mercury: its occurrence in air and precipitation, chemical transformations taking place in the atmosphere, and mercury fluxes to and from the Earth’s surface. Tentative budgets are estimated for mercury in the global atmosphere and in the atmosphere over Europe and Sweden. Major features revealed by this include the following: For the global atmosphere, current anthropogenic emissions are comparable to emissions by natural processes (preindustrial). The present background fluxes are probably significantly augmented by anthropogenic emissions during the industrial era. A dominant fraction (≥80%) of the total mercury in the atmosphere consists of a volatile gaseous mercury form, presumably elemental mercury, Hg0. This mercury has an atmospheric residence time of at least a few months, maybe even one or two years, and is uniformly distributed throughout the troposphere (1-2 ng m-3).The volatile mercury vapour (Hg0) is oxidized in the atmosphere to unknown forms that are soluble and can be scavenged by precipitation or dry deposited at the surface. The oxidation process is not known but photochemical oxidants (including ozone) are likely to be important. The atmospheric residence time of the water soluble (non-volatile) mercury is in the range of a few days to a few weeks, corresponding to a characteristic transport distance of up to a few thousand kilometers.Even if a dominant fraction of the mercury emitted from a...