On air‐borne transport of sulphur over the North Atlantic

Abstract

The sulphur content in the precipitation collected on Ocean weather ships in the North Atlantic has been analysed. From these data and from the results of trajectory computations it is concluded that considerable amounts of anthropogenic sulphur are transported from North America towards Europe. The dry deposition of sulphur over the Atlantic must be. small except close to the emitting sources. The amount of sulphur in precipitation from air coming from the high pressure area near the Azores is very small. It is concluded that the normal global value of natural sulphur in precipitation can hardly be larger than 0.1 mg 1-'.

MAP3S: studying the transport, transformation, and fate of atmospheric energy-related pollutants

“…Abroad, studies have shown similar effects on the acidification of precipitation in Scandinavia and northeastern Europe (e.g., ~o l i n et a]., 1971; Ottar, 1976;Prahm et al, 1976). Also, we cannot rule out the possibility that pollution from North America impacts northern Europe (Nyberg, 1976).…”

“…On ~ar~er'scales, major studies in Europe (e.g., Bolin, 1971;Ottar, 1976;Prahm et al, 1976) clearly demonstrate the importance of long-range transport in the atmospheric sulfur problem. Recent preliminary data indicate that long-range transport from North America to Europe may be occurring (Nyberg, 1976). Analysis of observations (e.g., Wexler, 1950;Volz, 1969;Hall et al, 1973;Husar et al, 1976a) and limited expeditionary field experiments with aircraft (e.g., Brown and Garber, 1976;Alkezweeny and Powell, 1977) and manned baloons (Zak, 1976) in the United States indicate that pollution problems are often regional and perhaps subcontinental in scale.…”