Potential impacts of mercury released from thawing permafrost

Kevin Schaefer; Yasin Elshorbany; Elchin Jafarov; Paul F. Schuster; Robert G. Striegl; Kimberly P. Wickland; Elsie M. Sunderland

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18398-5

Nature Communications (Sep 2020)

Potential impacts of mercury released from thawing permafrost

Kevin Schaefer,
Yasin Elshorbany,
Elchin Jafarov,
Paul F. Schuster,
Robert G. Striegl,
Kimberly P. Wickland,
Elsie M. Sunderland

Affiliations

Kevin Schaefer: National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
Yasin Elshorbany: School of Geoscience, College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Florida
Elchin Jafarov: Computational Earth Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Paul F. Schuster: U.S. Geological Survey, Water Mission Area, Earth Systems Processes Division
Robert G. Striegl: U.S. Geological Survey, Water Mission Area, Earth Systems Processes Division
Kimberly P. Wickland: U.S. Geological Survey, Water Mission Area, Earth Systems Processes Division
Elsie M. Sunderland: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18398-5
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 6

Abstract

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Permafrost locks away the largest reservoir of mercury on the planet, but climate warming threatens to thaw these systems. Here the authors use models to show that unconstrained fossil fuel burning will dramatically increase the amount of mercury released into future ecosystems.

Published in Nature Communications

ISSN: 2041-1723 (Online)
Publisher: Nature Portfolio
Country of publisher: United Kingdom
LCC subjects: Science
Website: https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

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