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Bromine-induced oxidation of mercury in the mid-latitude atmosphere

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 22–26 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, which enters remote ecosystemsprimarily through atmospheric deposition1,2. In the polar atmosphere, gaseous elemental mercury is oxidized to a highly reactive form of mercury, which is rapidly removed from the atmosphere by deposition3,4. These atmospheric mercury-depletion events are caused by reactive halogens, such as bromine, which are released from sea-ice surfaces5,6. Reactive halogens also exist at temperate and low latitudes7,8, but their influence on mercury in the atmosphere outside polar regions has remained uncertain. Here we show that bromine can oxidize gaseous elemental mercury at mid-latitudes, using measurements of atmospheric mercury, bromine oxide and other trace gases over the Dead Sea, Israel. We observed some of the highest concentrations of reactive mercury measured in the Earth’s atmosphere. Peaks in reactive mercury concentrations coincided with the near-complete depletion of elemental mercury, suggesting that elemental mercury was the source. The production of reactive mercury generally coincided with high concentrations of bromine oxide, but was also apparent at low levels of bromine oxide, and was observed at temperatures of up to 45 °C. Using a chemical box model, we show that bromine species were the primary oxidants of elemental mercury over the Dead Sea. We suggest that bromine-induced mercury oxidation may be an important source of mercury to the world’s oceans.

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Figure 1: Concentrations of mercury, BrO and O3 during measurements.
Figure 2: Detailed mercury, BrO and O3 patterns shown for two days with strong Hg(0) to Hg(II) conversions.
Figure 3: Simulations using a heterogenous chemical box model (MECCA).
Figure 4: Box-plot analyses of Hg(II) production rates (ΔHg(II) /Δt) as a function of BrO levels during early daytime Hg(II) formation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Kreidberg for editorial assistance; the Dead Sea Works for site logistics; J. Zingler, J. Lenvant and U. Corsmeier for meteorological data; R. Sander for use of the MECCA model; L. Wable for graphical support and J. A. Arnone, S. Lindberg and J. McConnell for critical reviews on an earlier manuscript. The study was funded by the US National Science Foundation (no 0813690 to D.O. and M.L.), and has benefited from a US Environmental Protection Agency Star-to-Achieve grant (R833378).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Desert Research Institute, 2215 Raggio Parkway, Reno, Nevada, 89512, USA

    Daniel Obrist & Xavier Faïn

  2. The Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel

    Eran Tas, Mordechai Peleg, Valeri Matveev, David Asaf & Menachem Luria

  3. Department of Atmospheric Chemistry, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Mainz 55128, Germany

    Eran Tas

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  1. Daniel Obrist
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Contributions

D.O. and M.L. led the study, including proposal writing, project coordination, data interpretation and manuscript preparation; D.O., M.P., V.M., X.F. and D.A. were directly involved with field measurements at the Dead Sea, data collection and data analysis; E.T. carried out modelling and interpretation of these results. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daniel Obrist.

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Obrist, D., Tas, E., Peleg, M. et al. Bromine-induced oxidation of mercury in the mid-latitude atmosphere. Nature Geosci 4, 22–26 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1018

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