Publication details
The impact of organochlorines cycling in the cryosphere on their global distributions and fate – 1. Sea ice
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Environmental Pollution |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2011.09.039 |
| Field | Water pollution and control |
| Keywords | Persistent organic pollutants; Global cycling; Sea ice; Modelling |
| Description | Global fate and transport of gamma-HCH and DDT was studied using a global multicompartment chemistry-transport model, MPI-MCTM, with and without a dynamic sea ice compartment. The MPI-MCTM is based on coupled ocean and atmosphere general circulation models.Sea ice hosts 7-9% of the burden of the surface ocean. Without cycling in sea ice the geographic distributions are shifted from land to sea. This shift of burdens exceeds the sea ice burden by a factor of approximate to 8 for gamma-HCH and by a factor of approximate to 15 for DDT. As regional scale seasonal sea ice melting may double surface ocean contamination, a neglect of cycling in sea ice (in an otherwise unchanged model climate) would underestimate ocean exposure in high latitudes. Furthermore, it would lead to overestimates of the residence times in ocean by 40% and 33% and of the total environmental residence times, tau(overall), of gamma-HCH and DDT by 1.6% and 0.6%, respectively. |
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