Scaling and correlation of atmospheric acid deposition evolutions

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and power spectrum density are applied to verify the presence of temporal scaling behavior and long-range persistence (LRP) of weekly hydrogen ion deposition (WHD), NO₃^- and SO₄^2- deposition series in National Atmospheric Deposition Program, USA, for the period 1978–2001. The results show a common scaling behavior for all sites analyzed. Two distinct scaling regions are identified by DFA1, one corresponding to 1 month to 1 year and the other to 1 year to 5 years. The WHD series obey power-law in two temporal regimes respectively with mean DFA1 scaling exponents α ₁≈0.68 and α ₂≈0.45, implying the presence of LRP in the acid deposition series and there is a tendency for a large deposition event to be followed by another large event, and vice versa. For DFA2–DFA4, however, the annual crossover, which divides the temporal scale into two regimes, disappears gradually with the order q of DFAq increasing, and the two scaling regimes turn to share the same scaling exponent close to α ₁. The result indicates that the scaling behavior exits in the two regimes with the same scaling exponent α ₁, and LRP prevails during the examined 1-month to 5-years scale. NO₃^- and SO₄^2- deposition evolve the same way as WHD does, implying the pollutants involving in acid deposition may share some prominent mechanism controlling their evolutions. We ascribe the long-range power-law scaling of acid deposition evolutions to the self-organized critical behavior of atmosphere under pollution stress and it should be considered in the trend prediction of acid deposition as an important factor.