Monitoring of Atmospheric Mercury at a Global Atmo

Authors: Hang Thi Nguyen KiHyun Kim MinYoung Kim Sungmin Hong YongHoon Youn ZangHo Shon Jeong Soon Lee

Publish Date: 2007/06/12

Volume: 185, Issue: 1-4, Pages: 149-164

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Abstract

In order to investigate the regional background concentration levels of mercury Hg measurements were routinely recorded on AnMyun Island off the coast of Korea December 2004 to April 2006 The mean concentration of Hg computed from the entire measurement period was 461 ± 221 ng m−3 with a range of 010–254 ng m−3 N = 10485 Using these data we inspected various aspects of Hg behavior from the relatively remote island of AnMyun in Korea Inspection of the seasonal patterns of Hg indicated that its concentration levels generally peaked in spring while reached a minimum in summer The summertime deficiency of Hg along with the lack of diurnal variation suggests that the environmental behavior of Hg at the study site was strongly suppressed by heavy precipitation during specific period The diurnal variations of Hg typically characterized by a relative daytime dominance are distinguishable between seasons so that such patterns disappear during the summer The results of our analysis when inspected in terms of longrange transport of airborne pollutants imply that Hg concentration levels can be affected intensively by transboundary input processes over certain period of time Its springtime dominance hence suggests the combined effects of various local source processes and the meteorological conditions favorable for the massive air mass transport phenomenon such as Asian Dust storms during that time periodThis research was carried out with the financial support of the Korea Polar Research Institute KORDI Grant PP06010 Also the authors would like to thank the Korea Research Foundation which provided grant that contributed to this research KRF2005201C00045 Many thanks also go to NOAA/ARL for providing the HYSPLIT model and meteorological data Special thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments

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