Up Scaling the Influence of Climate Change on the Air-Surface Exchange of Mercury

The recent UNEP Minamata Convention on Mercury, is a global treaty, signed by 128 countries, has the mission to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury. Human activities over the last few centuries has altered both the earth's climate system and added to the global mercury budget. Potential links between climate change and mercury emissions has not been adequately explored. This research has investigated the relationship between climate controls and mercury air-surface exchange and determined the potential implications of these findings with future climate change scenarios. The results show that climate and environmental parameters were the dominate influence for substrate-flux relationships for both natural and anthropogenically influenced sites. The up scaling results show that for a 4.4˚C increase in temperature there is a 62% increase in flux, approximately 15% for every 1˚C change in temperature.