Potential Atmospheric Transport Pathways for Mercury Measured in the Canadian High Arctic

Large-scale transport pathways for atmospheric gaseous mercury emitted from surrounding source regions to reach the Alert sampling site located at the Northwest Territories of Canada between August 1992 and August 1993 were investigated. The 12-month atmospheric mercury data set comprises blank-corrected total gaseous mercury (TGM) concentrations collected on gold-coated sand traps during one-week long sampling intervals. For TGM concentrations above the 12-month mean TGM level, the analysis reveals regions in Eastern Europe (close to East Germany and Poland), areas on Northeastern America in Canada (Northwest Territories), and central Siberia of the former U.S.S.R. Identification of the physical locations of the emission sources was limited by the temporal resolution of weekly averaged data; however, major atmospheric pathways of mercury transport to the Arctic were successfully resolved. The objective of this note is to demonstrate that the potential source contribution function could be applied to resolve the sources and recover transport pathways of atmospheric mercury over a large scale.