Impact of mercury emissions from incineration of automobile shredder residue in Japan

Mercury emissions from the incineration of automobile shredder residues (ASRs) were investigated. Continuous monitoring of elemental and reactive gaseous Hg in flue gas was performed in lab-scale and plant-scale ASR incineration. Results of continuous monitoring agreed with those obtained using the JIS K0222 method and Ontario-Hydro method. Before cleaning by air pollutant control devices (APCDs), reactive Hg was the dominant form of that element in both lab-scale and plant-scale results. Emission factors of reactive Hg before APCDs estimated from monitoring results showed large differences between plant-scale and lab-scale emissions. The emission factor in the plant scale was more than 10 times larger than that in the lab-scale, which is explainable by the different Hg contents of ASR. Based on plant-scale monitoring at the stack, emission factors after APCDs were estimated as 0.79 mg-Hg/Mg-ASR for elemental Hg and 6.8 mg-Hg/Mg-ASR for reactive Hg. Using these emission factors, total Hg emissions from ASR incineration were estimated as 2.2 kg/a. An ASR incineration plant investigated in this study used highly effective APCDs. Consequently, these emission factors might result in underestimation of national Hg emissions from ASR incineration. Emission factors estimated from lab-scale monitoring at a fabric filter outlet side might be more appropriate. However, even if emission factors calculated from plant-scale or the lab-scale monitoring are used, estimated emissions are still less than 1.0% of total Hg emissions in Japan. Therefore, Hg emissions from ASR incineration can be evaluated as insignificant. Unless Hg contents of ASR increase extremely, ASR incineration would be a minor source of Hg atmospheric emission in Japan, even if all ASRs were incinerated.     

Phytoplankton communities in the Bering Sea and adjacent seas

Vertical distribution of phytoplankton in early warming season in the eastern Bering Sea and adjacent sea areas was investigated. In the surface layer which was under the influence of newly melted sea ice in the shelf water region of the Bering Sea in May, remarkably dense populations ofThalassiosira hyalina andT. nordenskiöldii and relatively large populations ofFragilaria andNavicula occupied large part of phytoplankton community. In June, although theThalassiosira populations sunk into the bottom layer and withered, a certain part of theFragilaria-Navicula populations was still suspended in subsurface layer. Thus,Fragilaria-Navicula were the leading components of the June community in the shelf region.In the Bering Basin region, no dense phytoplankton populations were developed until a shallow thermocline was established. In June when the shallow thermocline developed near shelf edge,Thalassiosira decipiens burst out. As the shallow thermocline extended from near shelf to central part of the Basin region with surface warming, the areas of blooming also shifted from near shelf to the central part.Contribution No. 73 from the Research Institute of North Pacific Fisheries, Hokkaido University.     

Stability of planetary waves in a two-layer system

A stability of planetary waves on an infinite beta-plane is investigated in an idealized two-layer fluid system for the large local Rossby numberM. When a primary wave is barotropic, two kinds of barotropic instability modes are found. One of them was previously discussed byGill (1974). When a primary wave is baroclinic, two different kinds of modes that enable barotropic and baroclinic energy transfers are found. The one that has the larger growth rate gains its energy mainly from the mean shear of the primary wave when the internal rotational Froude numberF is smaller than 1/2. WhenF is larger than 1/2, however, the available energy conversion of the primary wave is dominant. This mode has a fairly large part of its energy in the barotropic motion although the primary wave is purely baroclinic.The effect ofO(M ^–2) corrections is found to have a stabilizing influence on all symmetrical modes. The geophysical applications of the present analysis are suggested in the context.     

The role of damped equatorial waves in the oceanic response to winds

In inviscid shallow water models currents generated by spatially uniform winds are transient and are eliminated by Rossby and equatorial Kelvin waves excited at the eastern and western coasts, respectively. The inclusion of mixing processes can lead to an entirely different steady state in which currents are present. It is shown that the mixing of heat affects the steady state more than does the mixing of momentum because the waves that are important in the oceanic adjustment are divergent.     

Spatial Patterns in Nutrient and In Vivo Fluorescence Distributions in the Marginal Ice Zone and the Seasonally Open Oceanic Zone in the Indian Sector of the Antarctic Ocean, in Austral Summer

Surface temperature, salinity, concentrations of silicate (Si) and nitrate + nitrite (N), and in vivo fluorescence (Fluor) were investigated in the marginal ice zone (MIZ) and the seasonally open oceanic zone (SOOZ) (32–40°E, 64–69°S) from February 23 to 28 1992. In the MIZ the mean Si and N were 67.8 ± 2.2 M and 32.5 ± 1.7 M, respectively. There was a trend that low N values coincided with high Fluor values. Observation conducted at one point (64°S, 38°E) revealed a diel variation pattern in Fluor. Applying this pattern of deviation from noon value, all Fluor data were normalized to value at local noon. In the MIZ a significant negative correlation was observed between the normalized Fluor and N but not Si. On the other hand, Si decreased continuously from south to north in the SOOZ and was negatively correlated with the normalized Fluor. Difference in Si concentration was about 30 M between the sea around 64°S and the MIZ, while the difference in N concentration was estimated as less than 10 M. If diatoms take up silicate and nitrogen at an approximate ratio of 1:1, additional nitrogenous nutrients other than nitrate and nitrite (e.g. ammonia, urea etc.) would be required. In this case, an f-ratio of lower than 33% is obtained. It is suggested that in the MIZ abundance of phytoplankton community dominated by non-diatom increases utilizing nitrate while in the SOOZ abundance of phytoplankton community dominated by diatoms increases consuming Si and regenerated nitrogen.     

Verification of Carbon Sink Assessment: Can We Exclude Natural Sinks?

Any human-induced terrestrial sink is susceptible to the effects of elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentration, nitrogen deposition, climate variability and other natural or indirect human-induced factors. It has been suggested in climate negotiations that the effects of these factors should be excluded from estimates of carbon sequestration used to meet the emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. This paper focuses on the methodologies for factoring out the effects of atmospheric and climate variability/change. We estimate the relative magnitude of the non-human induced effects by using two biosphere models and discuss possibilities for narrowing estimate uncertainty.     

Impact of intra-daily SST variability on ENSO characteristics in a coupled model

This paper explores the impact of intra-daily Sea Surface Temperature (SST) variability on the tropical large-scale climate variability and differentiates it from the response of the system to the forcing of the solar diurnal cycle. Our methodology is based on a set of numerical experiments based on a fully global coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation in which we alter (1) the frequency at which the atmosphere sees the SST variations and (2) the amplitude of the SST diurnal cycle. Our results highlight the complexity of the scale interactions existing between the intra-daily and inter-annual variability of the tropical climate system. Neglecting the SST intra-daily variability results, in our CGCM, to a systematic decrease of 15% of El Ni?o—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) amplitude. Furthermore, ENSO frequency and skewness are also significantly modified and are in better agreement with observations when SST intra-daily variability is directly taken into account in the coupling interface of our CGCM. These significant modifications of the SST interannual variability are not associated with any remarkable changes in the mean state or the seasonal variability. They can therefore not be explained by a rectification of the mean state as usually advocated in recent studies focusing on the diurnal cycle and its impact. Furthermore, we demonstrate that SST high frequency coupling is systematically associated with a strengthening of the air-sea feedbacks involved in ENSO physics: SST/sea level pressure (or Bjerknes) feedback, zonal wind/heat content (or Wyrtki) feedback, but also negative surface heat flux feedbacks. In our model, nearly all these results (excepted for SST skewness) are independent of the amplitude of the SST diurnal cycle suggesting that the systematic deterioration of the air-sea coupling by a daily exchange of SST information is cascading toward the major mode of tropical variability, i.e. ENSO.