Sandy Steffen on mercury...
April, 07 - 2008
Sitting in the comfort of a nice warm room
makes it hard to believe that just a few
feet away are thousands of kilometres of
ice and snow. My name is Alexandra (Sandy)
Steffen and I am a researcher from
Environment Canada sitting on board the
Amundsen for 5 weeks this spring.
Mercury is the reason I have been venturing to the Arctic on an annual basis since 1996. My expertise lies in the study of the transport, transformation and deposition of mercury in the Arctic. What is so interesting about mercury that I would spend 12 years trying to understand its behaviour? In the springtime when the Arctic is finally exposed to sunlight after the dark winter an amazing series of events take place. The ocean starts to crack open and form new ice which is rich with sea salts. This fresh ice and sea salts form beautiful sparkling crystals called frost flowers that, when exposed to the sunlight, create reactive chemicals that change how mercury behaves in the air. Mercury likes to live in the air for long periods of time which makes it susceptible to travel long distances from sources to remote regions like the Arctic. However, in the springtime it disappears from the air within a few hours! We found that when the mercury disappears from the air more if it is found in the snow. So, what we have been studying for many years is how mercury is transformed by the sun and sea salts into a more reactive form and is deposited onto the snow and ice surfaces in the Arctic.
I have been chasing mercury mostly in Alert, Nunavut but have also investigated it with my international colleagues at Barrow, Alaska, Ny-Alesund, Svalbard and Fox Lake, Yukon but this is my first venture on board an icebreaker to makes these studies over the ocean. Working with the CFL contaminants team on board the ship, we hope to get a broad perspective on the cycling of mercury from the air to the snow to the ice to the water to the little bugs that live in this area and perhaps all the way to the marine wildlife. I am also working with the Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice and Snow pack (OASIS) – Canada team on the ship to try and understand the atmospheric processes that mercury goes through right at the air – ice interface. Finally, I am also part of the Intercontinental Atmospheric Transport of Anthropogenic Pollutants to the Arctic (IncATPA) IPY funded program that is investigating from where mercury is transported to the Canadian Arctic. This program involves making measurements of toxic pollutants, including mercury, on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The Amundsen is one of the sites included in this program.
Ship life is wonderful; today we saw a polar bear, yesterday we drove past a seal sunning himself in the sun and I even got to play hockey on the ocean! The hours are long and the work is tough sometimes in the cold harsh windy Arctic but the scenery and the people are spectacular and make this all worth the challenges.
Mercury is the reason I have been venturing to the Arctic on an annual basis since 1996. My expertise lies in the study of the transport, transformation and deposition of mercury in the Arctic. What is so interesting about mercury that I would spend 12 years trying to understand its behaviour? In the springtime when the Arctic is finally exposed to sunlight after the dark winter an amazing series of events take place. The ocean starts to crack open and form new ice which is rich with sea salts. This fresh ice and sea salts form beautiful sparkling crystals called frost flowers that, when exposed to the sunlight, create reactive chemicals that change how mercury behaves in the air. Mercury likes to live in the air for long periods of time which makes it susceptible to travel long distances from sources to remote regions like the Arctic. However, in the springtime it disappears from the air within a few hours! We found that when the mercury disappears from the air more if it is found in the snow. So, what we have been studying for many years is how mercury is transformed by the sun and sea salts into a more reactive form and is deposited onto the snow and ice surfaces in the Arctic.
I have been chasing mercury mostly in Alert, Nunavut but have also investigated it with my international colleagues at Barrow, Alaska, Ny-Alesund, Svalbard and Fox Lake, Yukon but this is my first venture on board an icebreaker to makes these studies over the ocean. Working with the CFL contaminants team on board the ship, we hope to get a broad perspective on the cycling of mercury from the air to the snow to the ice to the water to the little bugs that live in this area and perhaps all the way to the marine wildlife. I am also working with the Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice and Snow pack (OASIS) – Canada team on the ship to try and understand the atmospheric processes that mercury goes through right at the air – ice interface. Finally, I am also part of the Intercontinental Atmospheric Transport of Anthropogenic Pollutants to the Arctic (IncATPA) IPY funded program that is investigating from where mercury is transported to the Canadian Arctic. This program involves making measurements of toxic pollutants, including mercury, on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The Amundsen is one of the sites included in this program.
Ship life is wonderful; today we saw a polar bear, yesterday we drove past a seal sunning himself in the sun and I even got to play hockey on the ocean! The hours are long and the work is tough sometimes in the cold harsh windy Arctic but the scenery and the people are spectacular and make this all worth the challenges.
|