Human impacts on open ocean mercury strongconcentrationsstrong - MTU.pdfVIP

GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES, VOL. 21, GB4022, doi:10.1029/2006GB002876, 2007 Click Here for Full Article Human impacts on open ocean mercury concentrations Elsie M. Sunderland1 and Robert P. Mason2 Received 2 November 2006; revised 28 June 2007; accepted 30 August 2007; published 27 December 2007. [1] We develop an empirically constrained multicompartment box model for mercury cycling in open ocean regions to investigate changes in concentrations resulting from anthropogenic perturbations of the global mercury cycle. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we explicitly consider the effects of variability in measured parameters on modeled seawater concentrations. Our simulations show that anthropogenic enrichment in all surface (25%) and deep ocean waters (11%) is lower than global atmospheric enrichment (300–500%) and varies considerably among geographic regions, ranging from 60% in parts of the Atlantic and Mediterranean to 1% in the deep Pacific. Model results indicate that open ocean mercury concentrations do not rapidly equilibrate with atmospheric deposition and on average will increase if anthropogenic emissions remain at their present level. We estimate the temporal lag between changes in atmospheric deposition and ocean mercury concentrations will vary from decades in most of the Atlantic up to centuries in parts of the Pacific. Citation: Sunderland, E. M., and R. P. Mason (2007), Human impacts on open ocean mercury concentrations, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 21, GB4022, doi:10.1029/2006GB002876. 1. Introduction lower in concentration than the Mediterranean Sea [Cossa et al., 1997, 2004]. Although several global-scale models for [2] Methylmercury exposure causes many adverse health mercury cycling