Articles | Volume 21, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-5635-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-5635-2021
Research article
 | 
14 Apr 2021
Research article |  | 14 Apr 2021

Where there is smoke there is mercury: Assessing boreal forest fire mercury emissions using aircraft and highlighting uncertainties associated with upscaling emissions estimates

David S. McLagan, Geoff W. Stupple, Andrea Darlington, Katherine Hayden, and Alexandra Steffen

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Cited articles

Amiro, B. D., Todd, J. B., Wotton, B. M., Logan, K. A., Flannigan, M. D., Stocks, B. J., Mason, J. A., Martell, D. L., and Hirsch, K. G.: Direct carbon emissions from Canadian forest fires, 1959—1999, Can. J. For. Res., 31, 512–525, https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-31-3-512, 2001. 
Andreae, M. O.: Emission of trace gases and aerosols from biomass burning – an updated assessment, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 8523–8546, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8523-2019, 2019. 
Andreae, M. O. and Merlet, P.: Emission of trace gases and aerosols from biomass burning, Global Biogeochem. Cy., 15, 955–966, https://doi.org/10.1029/2000GB001382, 2001. 
Ariya, P. A., Amyot, M., Dastoor, A., Deeds, D., Feinberg, A., Kos, G., Poulain, A., Ryjkov, A., Semeniuk, K., Subir, M., and Toyota, K.: Mercury physicochemical and biogeochemical transformation in the atmosphere and at atmospheric interfaces: A review and future directions, Chem. Rev., 115, 3760–3802, https://doi.org/10.1021/cr500667e, 2015. 
Artaxo, P., de Campos, R. C., Fernandes, E. T., Martins, J. V., Xiao, Z., Lindqvist, O., Fernández-Jiménez, M. T., and Maenhaut, W.: Large scale mercury and trace element measurements in the Amazon basin, Atmos. Environ., 34, 4085–4096, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-2310(00)00106-0, 2000. 
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Short summary
An assessment of mercury emissions from a burning boreal forest was made by flying an aircraft through its plume to collect in situ gas and particulate measurements. Direct data show that in-plume gaseous elemental mercury concentrations reach up to 2.4× background for this fire and up to 5.6× when using a correlation with CO data. These unique data are applied to a series of known empirical emissions estimates and used to highlight current uncertainties in the literature.
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