Overview of recent advances modeling in the global mercury cycle

There exists a plethora of pollutants of global concern for whom the ocean is a key part in their environmental cycle. Namely, mercury (Hg) and several persistent organic pollutants (POPs) which are subject to international treaties (e.g. Minamata Convention, Stockholm Convention) are actively exchanged between atmosphere and ocean and subsequently accumulated in the marine food web. Thus, modeling their environmental fate requires a numerical representation of atmospheric and marine physics, chemistry, and biology

Over the last 5 years 15 PhDs have been dedicated to unravel unknown processes in the global mercury cycle in the course of the EU project GMOS-Train. Many of these findings are now actively used for the ensemble modeling study performed in support of the Minamata Convention effectiveness evaluation. This multi-compartment Hg model and analysis project MCHgMAP is the first study dedicated to modeling the complete global cycle of mercuy.

In my presentation I will give an overview on recent findings on global Hg cycling in atmosphere, ocean and land and show first results of the MCHgMAP multi-compartment modeling study.