Empirical regional source-receptor relationships for acid rain and precursors in New England determined by elemental tracers

Conference · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1987 · Proceedings, Annual Meeting, Air Pollution Control Association; (USA)

OSTI ID:5076869

Rahn, K A; Heaton, R; Lowenthal, D H ^[1]

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1. Rhode Island Univ., Narragansett, RI (USA)

Because national controls on SO{sub 2} to curb acid rain could cost as much as $10 billion per year for 10 years, it is extremely important to know how to best place the controls, i.e., to understand the source-receptor relationship for acid deposition in eastern North America. Unfortunately, results from transport models are still very uncertain, due to the widespread nature of sulfur sources, the complexities of atmospheric reactions of sulfur, lack of solid data on dry deposition, and the difficulty of dealing with long-range transport. As recently as 1983, for example, the Committee on Atmospheric Transport and Chemical Transformation in Acid Precipitation of the National Research Council concluded that the relative importance for deposition at specific sites of long-range transport from distant sources as compared with more direct influences of local sources cannot be determined reliably from currently available models.'' This is clearly an undesirable situation, because it leads to broad control strategies by default. Controls which cost tens of billions of dollars must be based on positive scientific evidence. More-direct empirical data on regional-scale source receptor relationships for acid rain and precursors in North America are needed to fill this void. The authors believe that the new regional elemental tracer system for aerosol and precipitation being developed and tested in their laboratory can help. This paper summarizes the technique and its results to date.

• OSTI ID: 5076869
• Report Number(s): CONF-870695--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: Proceedings, Annual Meeting, Air Pollution Control Association; (USA) Journal Volume: 5
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290300 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Environment
Health
& Safety
290500 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Research
Development
Demonstration
& Commercialization
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540120* -- Environment
Atmospheric-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (1990-)
ACID RAIN
AEROSOLS
AIR POLLUTION CONTROL
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING
AIR QUALITY
ATMOSPHERIC PRECIPITATIONS
CHALCOGENIDES
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
COLLOIDS
CONTROL
DISPERSIONS
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSPORT
LONG-RANGE TRANSPORT
MASS TRANSFER
NATIONAL PROGRAM PLANS
NORTH AMERICA
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
POLLUTANTS
POLLUTION CONTROL
POLLUTION SOURCES
PRECURSOR
RAIN
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SAFETY
SOLS
SULFUR COMPOUNDS
SULFUR DIOXIDE
SULFUR OXIDES
TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT