Atmospheric Mercury Monitoring, Analysis, and Chemistry: New Insights and Progress toward Minamata Convention Goals

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on “Atmospheric Mercury Monitoring and Analysis” of the journal Atmosphere is devoted to all aspects of atmospheric mercury, including instrumental advances; air–surface fluxes; airborne mercury contamination from artisanal gold mining; indoor and outdoor air monitoring; mercury passive air samplers; and atmospheric mercury chemistry, isotopic composition, and modeling.

Mercury is a persistent and toxic heavy metal that concentrates up the aquatic food chain, reaching levels that can harm both humans and wildlife. Recognizing this global problem, over 100 nations from around the world have signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a treaty focused on reducing mercury pollution. Accurately measuring atmospheric mercury is critical to understanding its sources, cycling, distribution, and temporal trends and, thus, is key to evaluating the effectiveness of the Minamata Treaty. However, determining concentrations of airborne mercury remain challenging due to its low background (often <2 ng m⁻³) and complex atmospheric chemistry.

Further, because mercury recycles between environmental compartments, it is necessary to quantify fluxes between the air and surfaces, though fluxes from natural landscapes are still poorly characterized. Recently, passive air samplers for atmospheric mercury are gaining popularity because they are low in cost, require no power, and can be deployed at multiple locations, yielding greater spatial resolution, albeit at coarser temporal resolution compared to active sampling. Not to be overlooked, isotopic measurements—while extremely challenging to obtain—are offering new insights into atmospheric mercury movement and transformations.

Yet, much work needs to be done to better understand airborne mercury dynamics in a rapidly changing world and changing climate. Moreover, knowledge gained needs to be passed on to the next generation of scientists so that we can continue to take steps to minimize Hg exposure to future generations. Thus, I encourage everyone, especially the younger scientists, to submit your work to this Special Issue. Manuscripts on all aspects of atmospheric mercury, including short reviews, are welcome.

Prof. Dr. James Cizdziel
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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