Review of data on Eolian fluxes of industrial and natural lead to the lands and seas in remote regions on a global scale

Abstract

During preindustrial times about half the lead in the troposphere came from soil dusts while the remainder came from volcanic gases. Today the proportion of this natural lead in the atmosphere is overwhelmed by industrial lead emitted from smelters and automobile exhausts. In the Antarctic tropospheric cell, atmospheric concentrations of industrial lead are five-fold greater than natural lead concentrations, while in urban atmospheres the proportions of industrial lead are more than 10 000-fold greater than those of natural lead. About 90% of industrial lead emissions to the global atmosphere are introduced into the Northern hemisphere westerlies from North America, Europe and Japan, with most of the remainder being introduced into the Southern hemisphere westerlies from Brazil, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This creates a north-south gradient in global atmospheric lead concentrations across meridional tropospheric circulation cells because their convergence barriers restrict latitudinal mixing. Atmospheric lead concentrations in a pole-to-pole strip across the central Pacific show a decline in lead within meridional cells on either side of the Northern westerlies. This hemispheric set contains higher lead concentrations on the whole than does the corresponding set of meridional cells in the Southern hemisphere, because of the isolating effect of the equatorial mixing barrier. In the Southern hemisphere the westerlies cell again contains higher lead concentrations than do adjacent meridional cells, with the Antarctic cell being the least lead polluted portion of the Earth's atmosphere. Tabulations of eolian input fluxes of lead from these atmospheric reservoirs to the Earth's surface for remote regions are given in this review, as well as methods for estimating the proportions of natural and industrial lead in soil dust, sea salt, volcanic sulfate and anthropogenic particles in air and rain.

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