Danger Dust

The Yukon River flows west across Alaska toward the Bering Sea, eroding Arctic permafrost along its banks and transporting sediment downstream. Within that sediment lurks a toxic stowaway: mercury.

As the Arctic warms with climate change, heating up to four times faster than the global average, mercury sequestered in the permafrost for millennia is being eroded by rivers and released into the environment.

In a study published in Environmental Research Letters today, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences introduce a more accurate method to measure the amount of mercury released from permafrost by the river and estimate the total mercury awaiting release.

The toxic metal poses an environmental and health threat to the 5 million people living in the Arctic zone, more than 3 million of whom live in areas where permafrost is expected to vanish altogether by 2050.

Mercury stocks in discontinuous permafrost and their mobilization by river migration in the Yukon River Basin

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad536e