ABSTRACT
Recent findings of elevated levels of mercury in aquatic ecosystems and wildlife across South Florida have heightened concerns regarding the impact of local, anthropogenic sources of mercury and other toxic pollutants on South Florida, including the Florida Everglades. As part of the 1995 South Florida Atmospheric Mercury Monitoring Study (SoFAMMS), mesoscale meteorological modeling was performed in an effort to better understand the transport, dispersion and deposition of local, anthropogenic pollutants across South Florida during sea-breeze events.The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) was used to simulate a number of sea-breeze episodes which occurred during the study period, 06 August - 06 September 1995. The model was able to capture the main features of the sea-breeze events, including the horizontal and vertical extent of inland sea-breeze penetration, as well as the timing of the onset and duration of the observed sea-breeze events. Output from the RAMS model was fed into a Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model (LPDM) that simulated the transport and dispersion of pollutant plumes from local power plants and incinerators located along in Southeast Florida. The RAMS output was also fed into the Hybrid Single-Particle Integrated Trajectory (Hysplit_4) model in an effort to simulate the surface deposition of pollutants emitted from the aforementioned sources.Study results indicate that a significant fraction (6-8 percent) of the emis
sions from the local, anthropogenic sources studied were transported and dry deposited to the Everglades during the sea-breeze events simulated. These findings are important, as they suggest that dry-deposition of locally emitted, anthropogenic pollutants (including mercury) may make significant contributions to the pollutant burden of the ecologically sensitive Everglades. Two case studies from this research are presented.