First field-based atmospheric observation of the reduction of reactive mercury driven by sunlight

Hourly speciated measurements of atmospheric mercury made in a remote, high-altitude site in the Tibetan Plateau revealed the first field observations of the reduction of reactive mercury in the presence of sunlight in the atmosphere. Measurements were collected over four winter months on the shore of Nam Co Lake in the inland Tibetan Plateau. The data was analyzed to identify sources and atmospheric transformations of the speciated mercury compounds. The absence of local anthropogenic sources provided a unique opportunity to examine chemical transformations of mercury. An optimization algorithm was used to determine the parameters of a chemical box model that would match the measured reactive mercury concentrations. This required the presence of a photolytic reduction reaction previously observed in laboratory studies and in power plant plumes. In addition, the model estimated the role of vertical mixing in diluting reactive gaseous mercury during the day, and the role of bromine chemistry in oxidizing gaseous elemental mercury to produce reactive gaseous mercury. This work provides further evidence of the need to add the photolytic reduction reaction of oxidized mercury into atmospheric transport models in order to better simulate mercury deposition.