Arctic sea-ice controls the release of mercury

A French-American team, including researchers from CNRS, IRD, the Universite Paul Sabatier and the Université de Pau, has recently highlighted a new role that sea-ice plays in the mercury cycle in the Arctic. By blocking sunlight, sea-ice could influence the breakdown and transfer into the atmosphere of toxic forms of mercury present in the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean. These results, which suggest that climate plays a key role in the mercury cycle and that the release of mercury into the atmosphere could be accentuated by the melting of Arctic sea-ice, are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg