POLLUTION IN THE ARCTIC
by Glen Shaw

The last thing one would thing about the Arctic is that its environment is contaminated! Log books of polar explorer's in the nineteenth and earth twentieth centuries are replete with exclamations of the Arctic's cleanliness, its crystal air, and sparkling ices. Little did they know, that even such a remote place would slowly start to become contaminated from mankinds industrial buildup.

Now we know that even the far away Arctic is surprisingly contaminated and we scientists understand partly why. But there are many unanswered questions.

In Alaska, we think the predominant contamination enters through the atmospheric currents. In the case of long-lived industrial by products, such as carbon dioxide created by the burning of fossil fuels, or ozone-destroying CFC's, the whole world's industrial operation is the source. The greenhouse warming from slowly building carbon dioxide is likely to have some serious consequences in the future, as permafrost melts and ice packs shift.

Some volatile by-products, such as mercury, and pesticides and other organics, wind up depositing preferentially in the cold Arctic in a kind of multiple distillation process that slowly moves these compounds away from the warmer and towards the colder regions on the planet. Very little is understood about this complicated process.

The most significant quantities of "arctic haze" enters Alaska from smelters and large industrial processing in Eurasia. These compounds build up in late winter to late spring and come into the state through the westerlies and in currents of air that flow preferentially around the Siberian High pressure system in eastern Russia. Large smelting complexes on the Taymyar Peninsula and on the Kola Peninsula are thought to be particularly important sources of the north American arctic haze.

One interesting question is "where does the arctic haze eventually go?" Though the haze is not a pretty sight hanging in the Arctic skies, it is only very slowly being deposited, or removed to the surface. This is because of the temperature inversions and low solar heating in the region. But sometime in late spring the haze disappears.

We do not understand where or how, but the surface deposition might occur in places where cold air flows over the moist, warming surface areas in spring. Whether there may be ecological consequences is an open question.