Project description
Arctic climate change impact on mercury recycling
Large amounts of mercury trapped within Arctic permafrost and ocean sediments are being released by climate-induced warming, threatening ecosystems and indigenous populations. Melting sea ice, vegetation shifts and increased biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emissions are altering mercury cycling, which is difficult to model due to limited field data. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the WarMer project aims to improve predictive modelling of mercury transport across land, ocean and air. Its objectives include quantifying mercury uptake by Arctic vegetation under fluctuating temperature and humidity, evaluating how rising BVOC emissions impact the oxidation and deposition of mercury, as well as investigating mercury redistribution from the ocean to land due to sea ice loss.
Objective
Mercury (Hg) pollution poses potential risks to Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous communities dependent on marine food webs. While global Hg emissions are declining, vast stores of legacy Hg remain in Arctic soils, vegetation, ocean, and sea ice. Climate change is now intensifying vegetation shifts, boosting plant emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), and accelerating sea ice loss—each of which may significantly alter Arctic Hg cycling. Yet these impacts remain poorly quantified due to limited field data and oversimplified treatment of ecological feedback in existing models.
WarMer addresses these gaps through three integrated work packages. WP1 will use climate chamber experiments to measure species-specific gaseous Hg (Hg0) uptake among dominant Arctic plants (mosses, lichens, shrubs) under varying temperature and humidity. These data will update plant–Hg processes in the LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model, enabling more accurate simulations under Arctic greening. WP2 will assess how warming-driven BVOC emissions influence atmospheric Hg oxidation and deposition via changes in oxidant capacity (e.g. OH, O3), by linking LPJ-GUESS with the atmospheric chemistry model GEOS-Chem. WP3 will apply a fully coupled system, based on existing integration of GEOS-Chem with the ocean model MITgcm, to evaluate how sea ice loss increases Hg re-emissions from the ocean and redistributes it to land—a neglected but critical exposure pathway.
WarMer will reveal how Arctic climate change reshapes Hg cycling by uncovering overlooked links between vegetation shifts, oxidant chemistry, and sea ice decline. Its process-based framework will improve forecasts of pollutant behavior across land, ocean, and air. The results will support Arctic health risk assessments and guide pollution response under international frameworks like AMAP and the Minamata Convention by identifying emerging Hg hotspots and informing targeted monitoring, mitigation, and global policy action.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences chemical sciences electrochemistry electrolysis
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry transition metals
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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