Historical records of mercury: Recent peat bog and snowpack studies
March 15th, 2010
- Mercury in Scottish peat bogs shows that UK mercury pollution has decreased but levels are still high.
- Mercury in the Greenland snowpack shows mercury levels peaked in the 1970s.
Planet Earth online Aug 2009: UK Mercury pollution still high despite decrease – Scottish peat bog study
Scientists have found that atmospheric levels of mercury are declining since they peaked in the 1960s, but levels are still not as low as before the industrial revolution. The findings come from the study of cores collected from Scottish peat bogs. Science of the total environment article: Farmer et al (2009)
Environmental Research Web Oct 30 2009: Mercury levels peaked in 1970s – study of Hg levels in air within Greenland snowpack
Although it’s commonly believed that manmade emissions of mercury over the last century have disrupted the global mercury cycle, the first continuous monitoring of mercury levels only began during the 1990s, in Europe and the Arctic. Now a team from France, the US and Italy has produced the first continuous record of gaseous elemental mercury in the boreal atmosphere for the last 70 years, by studying air from inside a perennial snowpack, or firn, in Greenland. Study on Hg in the boreal atmosphere over the last 70 years, looking at air from inside a perennial snowpack in Greenland. “We show that implementation of Hg air regulations had a fast and positive impact on the atmospheric Hg reservoir in the past.” Proceedings of the national academy of sciences article: Fain et al (2009).
(The group are also developing cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) for gaseous elemental mercury.)
