PARENT SESSION
55 - Atmospheric Transport and Global Pollution
8:30 AM to 12:20 PM, Wednesday, 15 May 2002
Session Chair: Jones, Kevin ², ² .
Stolz B

(55-08) Studying Environmental Fate of Persistent Organic Pollutants using a Multicompartment Chemistry-Transport-Model.

Semeena, V.S.^*,1, Lammel, G.¹, ¹ Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

ABSTRACT- Many chemicals, intentionally (such as pesticides) or unintentionally introduced into the environment are persistent or undergo long-range transport. The environmental fate is determined by chemical transformations in the compartments and inter-media and intra-media transports. Once, deposited from the atmosphere, semivolatile compounds, such as POPs and most pesticides, which are slowly degradable in the ground compartments will undergo one or more subsequent atmospheric cylces. This may imply effectively long atmospheric residence times. We use a complex (3D, dynamic) multicompartment chemistry-transport model which is based on a general circulation model of the atmosphere, ECHAM4, for the study of the multimedia environmental fate of semivolatile organic compounds. The atmospheric cycling and the geographic and compartmental distributions of -HCH, -HCH and DDT is studied as influenced by the mode of entry and the region of emission. Respective results will be presented and discussed.

Key words: environmental exposure, multimedia model, compartmental distribution, persistent organic pollutants