Relationships between Atmospheric Transport Regimes and PCB Concentrations in the Air at Zeppelin, Spitsbergen

UBL, Sandy, Martin SCHERINGER and Konrad HUNGERBUHLER. Relationships between Atmospheric Transport Regimes and PCB Concentrations in the Air at Zeppelin, Spitsbergen. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. WASHINGTON: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, 2017, vol. 51, No 17, p. 9784-9791. ISSN 0013-936X. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02571.

Basic information

• Original name: Relationships between Atmospheric Transport Regimes and PCB Concentrations in the Air at Zeppelin, Spitsbergen
• Authors: UBL, Sandy (756 Switzerland), Martin SCHERINGER (756 Switzerland, guarantor, belonging to the institution) and Konrad HUNGERBUHLER (756 Switzerland).
• Edition: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON, AMER CHEMICAL SOC, 2017, 0013-936X.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 10511 Environmental sciences
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Impact factor: Impact factor: 6.653
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14310/17:00100152
• Organization unit: Faculty of Science
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02571
• UT WoS: 000410255800040
• Keywords in English: PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS; PARTICLE DISPERSION MODEL; POLYCHLORINATED-BIPHENYLS PCBS; HISTORICAL EMISSION INVENTORY; ARCTIC ATMOSPHERE; SOURCE REGIONS; PESTICIDES; CONGENERS; FLEXPART; TRACKING
• Tags: NZ, rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Polychlorinated' biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent hazardous chemicals that are still detected in the atmosphere and other environmental media, although their production has been banned for several decades. At the long-term monitoring site, Zeppelin at Spitsbergen, different PCB congeners have been continuously measured for more than a decade. However, it is not clear what factors determine the seasonal and interannual variability of different (lighter versus heavier) PCB congeners. To investigate the influence of atmospheric transport patterns on PCB-28 and PCB-101 concentrations at Zeppelin, we applied the Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model FLEXPART and calculated "footprints" that indicate the potential source regions of air arriving at Zeppelin. By means of a cluster analysis, we assigned groups of similar footprints to different transport regimes and analyzed the PCB concentrations according to the transport regimes. The concentrations of both PCB congeners are affected by the different transport regimes. For PCB-101, the origin of air masses from the European continent is primarily related to high concentrations; elevated PCB-101 concentrations in winter can be explained by the high frequency of this transport regime in winter, whereas PCB-101 concentrations are low when air is arriving from the oceans. For PCB-28, in contrast, concentrations are high during summer when air is mainly arriving from the oceans but low when air is arriving from the continents. The most likely explanation of this finding is that local emissions of PCB-28 mask the effect of long-range transport and determine the concentrations measured at Zeppelin.

Links

• EF15_003/0000469, research and development project: Name: Cetocoen Plus
• LM2015051, research and development project: Name: Centrum pro výzkum toxických látek v prostředí (Acronym: RECETOX RI)

Investor: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR