Europe sulfur cycle

An atmospheric sulfur inventory for the whole European continent has been recently constructed by E. Meszaros et al. (1978). These authors show on the basis of the comparison of anthropogenic sulfur emission (Semb, 1978) and sulfur advection from the Atlantic that the sulfur gained by advection is small. 70-85 % of the sulfur emitted and imported is removed over the continent equally by dry (mostly in form of S02) and wet deposition. Meszaros and his associates have estimated the dry deposition of S02 by using an average European S02—S concentration calculated from data in Table 13 (3.2 /tg m-3) and a dry deposition velocity of 1cm s (Garland, 1978). The value of wet deposition was based on precipitation chemistry measurements. It follows from this quantitative calculation that Europe contributes 15-30 % of its sulfur emission to the tropospheric sulfur cycle of other areas. 

Friedrich, R. (2009) Natural and biogenic emissions of environmentally relevant atmospheric trace constituents in Europe. Atmospheric Environment 43 1377-1379 Friend, J. R (1973) The global sulfur cycle. In Chemistry of the lower atmosphere (Ed. I. E. 

The main justification for diesel fuel desulfurization is related to particulate emissions which are subject to very strict rules. Part of the sulfur is transformed first into SO3, then into hydrated sulfuric acid on the filter designed to collect the particulates. Figure 5.21 gives an estimate of the variation of the particulate weights as a function of sulfur content of diesel fuel for heavy vehicles. The effect is greater when the test cycle contains more high temperature operating phases which favor the transformation of SO2 to SO3. This is particularly noticeable in the standard cycle used in Europe (ECE R49). 

Unfortunately as Kellogg et al., Robinson and Robbins, Junge, and Eriksson have all pointed out, most of the atmospheric measurements have been made in polluted areas of the United States and Europe, so not much is known about normal background concentrations of sulfur compounds and their global distribution. Therefore the atmospheric cycle is somewhat speculative, as are also estimates of individual sinks, sources, and concentrations. 

Critical loads of sulfur and nitrogen on North Asian ecosystems The models for calculation of critical loads in North Asian ecosystems are shown in Box 3. In the ecosystems of the Asian part of Russia these values of critical loads for N, CL(N), and S, CL(S), compounds are shown to be less than in Europe due to many peculiarities of climate regime (long winter with accumulation of pollutants in snow cover) and depressed biogeochemical cycling of elements (see Chapter 7, Section 1). The minimum values of both CL(N) and CL(S) are < 50 eq/ha/yr. and the maximum ones are > 300 eq/ha/yr. (Figure 24 and Figure 25). 

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