Mercury in the atmosphere around Japan, Korea, and China as observed during the 2001 ACE‐Asia field campaign: Measurements, distributions, sources, and implications

Abstract

We report on mercury in the atmosphere of east Asia (Japan, Korea, and China) as measured from sea level to ∼7000 m during 16 research flights in the National Science Foundation (NSF)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) C‐130 aircraft during the Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE‐Asia) campaign (http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/aceasia/). The air at all altitudes contained concentrations of atmospheric mercury above the global background. The atmosphere was highly stratified with plumes originating from massive dust storms carried out of China, from local industrial pollution, from volcanoes, and, less well defined, from biomass burning. Most often the air masses were mixtures, e.g., dust layers contained anthropogenic emissions or volcanic plumes were embedded in anthropogenic pollution; thus the total data set showed no significant correlations of gaseous mercury with the most common anthropogenic pollutants in the area (CO and SO2), but good correlations were observed for identifiable plumes. Highest mixing ratios for gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) were found in industrial plumes exiting China (∼6.3 ng/m3), Korea (∼3 ng/m3), and Japan (∼3 ng/m3). The core of the plume from Miyake Jima volcano contained ∼3.7 ng/m3 of GEM. Crustal mercury was also present, emitted and subsequently deposited during the outbreak of the spring dust storms. Some of the nondust aerosols contained soluble mercury in highly variable ratios with the gas‐phase mercury contained in the same plume. Preliminary estimates for the export from China are 5–15 t of crustal mercury during the dust storms, ∼150 t/yr of gas‐phase mercury from biomass/biofuel combustion, and ∼600 t/yr from industrial sources, mostly from coal combustion. Gaseous mercury is a useful tracer for industrial, volcanic, and biomass‐burning sources, but in most cases, robust plume identification required one or more cotracers. Because of the inertness of GEM and the ease of its measurement it is well suited for the tracking of long‐range transport.