April 2008: Present-Day and Preindustrial Cycles in a Global 3D Land-Ocean-Atmosphere Model for Mercury

We develop a global, 3D land-ocean-atmosphere model for mercury (GEOS-Chem), and use it to construct preindustrial and present biogeochemical cycles of mercury, examine the legacy of past anthropogenic emissions, map anthropogenic enrichment factors for deposition, and attribute mercury deposition in the United States.

The above plot shows annual mean surface fluxes of mercury in the preindustrial simulation: soil volatilization, evapotranspiration, prompt recycling, ocean evasion, geogenic emission, and total deposition. The total emission from the first five terms equals the deposition flux. The color scale is saturated at the highest levels in the figure. Global totals (Mg y^-1) are indicated for each category in the bottom right corner of the panel. For more details see Selin et al. [2008].