I don't understand why the concentration is relevant. The issue is the amount. Once the permafrost melts, the mercury locked in it will enter the mercury cycle. I don't have a model of how this will change the amount of mercury in our diet, for example, but it seems a good first order estimate would be that it is proportional to the total increase of mercury in the mercury cycle. The concentration of mercury in fish may be higher than in soil, but is the total amount of mercury in fish greater than than the total amount in soil?
>> I don't understand why the concentration is relevant.
Well from the one part is sounds like the concentration is normal:
>> Schuster and his colleagues found their measurements were consistent with published data on mercury in non-permafrost and permafrost soils from thousands of other sites worldwide.
Once you realize that, the whole thing becomes a big alarmist scare. If the arctic melts that doesn't mean the mercury is going to suddenly migrate into the rest of the world. It will probably be taken up in arctic plants and wildlife in the same proportions it exists everywhere else. But they seem to want us to think this is some new lurking scary demon of climate change that's going to come get us.
I was hoping to read something interesting, like a hypothesis about why mercury was concentrated in the arctic but all I got was a finding that it's the same as everywhere else.
> If the arctic melts that doesn't mean the mercury is going to suddenly migrate into the rest of the world. It will probably be taken up in arctic plants and wildlife in the same proportions it exists everywhere else.
I am curious if you are an expert in this field and know this to be true, or if you are making a quick assumption from a layman's understanding.
Reading the full text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075571/full
Where there is more context to the quote about their measurements being consistent with non permafrost sites, and the discussion about active layer vs permafrost layers and mercury cycles, it is not clear to me that you take is correct.
It would be wonderful if someone knowledgeable could chime in.
No, it's not my field. I agree it would be nice if someone who is could explain how the findings are different than elsewhere, and how and why it might be a problem, without all the "game changer" and other panic hype.
I was just going mainly on that one paragraph which seems rather benign. It would be really nice to understand why they think it's not.
