[WarMer] Warming Arctic: Shifting Mercury Fates
Ente: European Commission
Scadenza: 2029-04-30
Importo max: 247.553,28 EUR
Paese: EU
Descrizione
Mercury (Hg) pollution poses potential risks to Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous communities dependent on marine food webs. While global Hg emissions are declining, vast stores of legacy Hg remain in Arctic soils, vegetation, ocean, and sea ice. Climate change is now intensifying vegetation shifts, boosting plant emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), and accelerating sea ice loss—each of which may significantly alter Arctic Hg cycling. Yet these impacts remain poorly quantified due to limited field data and oversimplified treatment of ecological feedback in existing models.
WarMer addresses these gaps through three integrated work packages. WP1 will use climate chamber experiments to measure species-specific gaseous Hg (Hg0) uptake among dominant Arctic plants (mosses, lichens, shrubs) under varying temperature and humidity. These data will update plant–Hg processes in the LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model, enabling more accurate simulations under Arctic greening. WP2 will assess how warming-driven BVOC emissions influence atmospheric Hg oxidation and deposition via changes in oxidant capacity (e.g., OH, O3), by linking LPJ-GUESS with the atmospheric chemistry model GEOS-Chem. WP3 will apply a fully coupled system, based on existing integration of GEOS-Chem with the ocean model MITgcm, to evaluate how sea ice loss increases Hg re-emissions from the ocean and redistributes it to land—a neglected but critical exposure pathway.
WarMer will reveal how Arctic climate change reshapes Hg cycling by uncovering overlooked links between vegetation shifts, oxidant chemistry, and sea ice decline. Its process-based framework will improve forecasts of pollutant behavior across land, ocean, and air. The results will support Arctic health risk assessments and guide pollution response under international frameworks like AMAP and the Minamata Convention by identifying emerging Hg hotspots and informing targeted monitoring, mitigation, and global policy action.
Settori: Arctic Warming, Mercury Cycling, Modelling, Vegetation Shifts, Atmospheric Chemistry, Sea Ice.
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