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Atmospheric depletion of mercury over Antarctica during glacial periods

Nature Geoscience volume 2, pages 505–508 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Mercury is a globally dispersed toxic metal that affects even remote polar areas. During seasonal atmospheric mercury depletion events in polar areas, mercury is removed from the atmosphere1,2 and subsequently deposited in the surface snows3. However, it is unknown whether these events, which have been documented for the past two decades, have occurred in the past. Here we show that over the past 670,000 years, atmospheric mercury deposition in surface snows was greater during the coldest climatic stages, coincident with the highest atmospheric dust loads. A probable explanation for this increased scavenging is that the oxidation of gaseous mercury by sea-salt-derived halogens occurred in the cold atmosphere. The oxidized mercury compounds were then transferred to the abundant mineral dust particles and deposited on the snowpack, leading to the depletion of gaseous mercury in the Antarctic atmosphere. We conclude that polar regions acted as a mercury sink during the coldest climatic stages, and that substantial polar deposition of atmospheric mercury is therefore not an exclusively recent phenomenon.

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Figure 1: Concentrations and fluxes of total mercury (HgT) to Dome C.
Figure 2: Concentrations of total mercury, inorganic mercury and methylmercury, in the EPICA Dome C ice core.

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Acknowledgements

This work is a contribution to the ‘European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica’ (EPICA), a joint ESF (European Science Foundation)/EU scientific programme, funded by the European Commission (EPICA-MIS) and by national contributions from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. This is the EPICA publication 222. In Belgium, the financial support is acknowledged from the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), Brussels, Belgium; in France from the Institut Universitaire de France, the Ministère de l’Environnement et de l’Aménagement du Territoire, the Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie, the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers, the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and the Université Joseph Fourier of Grenoble; in Italy, from the Consorzio per l’Attuazione del Programma Nazionale delle Ricerche in Antartide, under projects on Environmental Contamination and Glaciology. This research has also been supported by Marie Curie Fellowships of the European Community programme (contracts HPMF-CT-2002-01772, MEIF-CT-2006-024156). We acknowledge B. Delmonte, A. Dommergue, R. Ebinghaus, S. Lindberg, C. Temme and E. Wolff for useful comments. Finally, we would like to thank all of the scientific and logistic personnel of PNRA and IPEV working at Dome C, Antarctica.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes (IDPA-CNR), Dorsoduro 2137, 30123 Venice, Italy

    Petru Jitaru, Paolo Gabrielli, Fréderic A. M. Planchon, Paolo Cescon & Carlo Barbante

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp, Campus Drie Eiken, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium

    Petru Jitaru & Freddy C. Adams

  3. Department of Biomedical and Inorganic Chemistry, Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d’Essais (LNE), 1 rue Gaston Boissier, 75724 Paris CEDEX 15, France

    Petru Jitaru

  4. Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement UMR 5183 Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble/CNRS 54, rue Molière, B.P. 96, 38402 St Martin d’Heres cedex, France

    Paolo Gabrielli, Alexandrine Marteel, Pierre-Alexis Gauchard, Christophe P. Ferrari & Claude F. Boutron

  5. School of Earth Sciences and Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

    Paolo Gabrielli

  6. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Siena, via del Laterino 8, 53 100 Siena, Italy

    Alexandrine Marteel

  7. School of Chemistry, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

    John M. C. Plane

  8. Geology Department Leuvensesteenweg, Royal Museum for Central Africa, 13, 3080 Tervuren, Belgium

    Fréderic A. M. Planchon

  9. Polytech Grenoble (Institut Universitaire de France), Université Joseph Fourier, 28 avenue Benoît Frachon, 38041 Grenoble, B.P. 53, France

    Christophe P. Ferrari

  10. Unité de Formation et de Recherche de Physique (Institut Universitaire de France), Université Joseph Fourier, Domaine Universitaire, B.P. 68 38041 Grenoble, France

    Claude F. Boutron

  11. Korea Polar Research Institute, 7-50, Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 406-840, Korea

    Sungmin Hong

  12. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Dorsoduro 2137, 30123 Venice, Italy

    Paolo Cescon & Carlo Barbante

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  1. Petru Jitaru
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Contributions

C.F.B., C.B., C.P.F., P.C. and F.C.A. planned the project; P.G., A.M., P.-A.G. and S.H. carried out sample preparation; P.G., A.M. and F.A.M.P. determined total mercury; P.J. carried out mercury speciation; P.G., J.M.C.P., C.B. and P.J. carried out the data interpretation and wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paolo Gabrielli.

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Jitaru, P., Gabrielli, P., Marteel, A. et al. Atmospheric depletion of mercury over Antarctica during glacial periods. Nature Geosci 2, 505–508 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo549

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