Influence of emissions on regional atmospheric mercury concentrations

Abstract

Mercury is a global pollutant that is rapidly transported in the atmosphere. Unlike the majority of air pollutants the background concentrations of mercury play a major role for the atmospheric concentrations on a hemispheric scale. In this study the influence of regional anthropogenic emissions in comparison to the global emissions on mercury concentrations over Europe are investigated. For this purpose an advanced threedimensional model system is used that consists of three components. The emission model SMOKE-EU, the meteorological model COSMO-CLM, and the chemistry transport model (CTM) CMAQ. A variety of sensitivity runs is performed in order to determine the influence of different driving factors (i.e. boundary conditions, anthropogenic and natural emissions, emission factors, meteorological fields) on the atmoshperic concentrations of different mercury species. This study is part of the European FP7 project GMOS (Global Mercury Observation System). The aim is to identify the most important drivers for atmospheric mercury in order to optimize future regional modelling studies in the course of the GMOS project. Moreover, the model results are used to determine areas of interest for air-plane based in-situ measurements which are also part of GMOS.