Water volcanic emission

Acid rain is actually a catchall phrase for any kind of acidic precipitation, including snow, sleet, mist, and fog. Acid rain begins when water comes into contact with sulfur and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere. These oxides can come from natural sources such as volcanic emissions or decaying plants. But there are man-made sources as well, such as power plant and automobile emissions. In the United States, two-thirds of all the sulfur dioxide and one-fourth of the nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere are produced by coal-burning power plants. 

Vanadium was discovered in 1830. It is present at 0.01% in earth s crust. Vanadium is released naturally into the air through the formation of continental dust, marine aerosols, and volcanic emissions. The natural release of vanadium into water and soils occurs primarily as a result of weathering of rocks and soil erosion. Anthropogenic sources include the combustion of fossil fuels, particularly residual fuel oils, which constitute the single largest overall release of vanadium to the atmosphere. Deposition of atmospheric vanadium is also an important source... 

Based on chemical measurements for river water and atmospheric particles, it is clear that river inflow is by far the most important mechanism for the delivery of dissolved major ions and elements to the ocean. This is not the case for all elements some of the trace metals such as iron and lead have important sources from atmospheric dust, but our discussion will focus on the flux of major elements to the ocean. The concentration and origin of the major ions to river water is presented in Table 2.1. Weathering of rocks on land is the origin of the cations, Na+, Mg ", Ca " and K", whereas the source of the anions Cl, SO4 and HCOj is partly from rock weathering and partly from the gases CO2, SO2 and HCl that are delivered to the atmosphere via volcanic emissions over geologic time. 

Elements respond to these driving forces in ways that depend on their chemical characteristics. Volatile molecules formed by nonmetallic elements enter the atmosphere from volcanic emissions, as waste products of life, and from human energy use and industry. Some volatile compounds are rapidly oxidized by photochemical processes, and some are quickly washed out by dissolving in rainfall. Elements (especially metallic ones) that do not form volatile compounds under normal conditions are confined to the solid and liquid parts of the environment. Soluble ions (e.g. Na+, Cl-) are removed from rocks in weathering processes and end up in sea water. Other elements (e.g. Al,... 

While many natural processes produce chlorine at ground level (including for example, sea salt and volcanic emissions of HC1), these compounds are efficiently removed in precipitation (rain and snow) due to high solubility. The removal of HC1 emitted, for example, in volcanic plumes (which contain a great deal of water and hence form rain) is extremely efficient (see, e.g., Tabazadeh and Turco, 1993). This renders even the most explosive volcanic plumes ineffective at providing significant inputs of chlorine to the stratosphere. Observations... 

The primitive earth long remained covered in darkness, wrapped in dense burning clouds into which water vapor poured continuously from volcanic emissions. When temperatures finally cooled sufficiently, the clouds began to melt into rain. At first, falling on incandescent rock, the rain evaporated, but the evaporation... 

Mercury is present in the atmosphere mainly due to volcanic emissions but also as a result of industrial pollution. The total amount of global emissions of mercury to the atmosphere are not accurately known at present, although there is evidence that the atmospheric concentration of mercury has increased by about 1% per year for the last 25 years. The volcanic emissions are very big, between 25 000 and 100 000 tonne/year. They are responsible for a base level of mercury concentration in the ground and water. Mercury from the atmosphere is enriched in the surface layers of the ground, where it forms complexes with humus. Rain water dissolves and transports humus to streams and lakes. Mercury is enriched in the top layers of the bottom sediments. 

Acid rain is caused primarily by sulfur dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Sulfur is an impurity in these fuels for example, coal typically contains 2-3% by weight sulfur.1M Other sources of sulfur include the industrial smelting of metal sulfide ores to produce the elemental metal and, in some parts of the world, volcanic eruptions. When fossils fuels are burned, sulfur is oxidized to sulfur dioxide (SO2) and trace amounts of sulfur trioxide (SC>3)J21 The release of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide emissions to the atmosphere is the major source of acid rain. These gases combine with oxygen and water vapor to form a fine mist of sulfuric acid that settles on land, on vegetation, and in the ocean. 

Extremely stringent lower limits were reported by Rank (29) in 1968. A spectroscopic detection of the Lyman a(2 p - 1 s) emission line of the quarkonium atom (u-quark plus electron) at 2733 A was expected to be able to show less than 3 108 positive quarks, to be compared with 1010 lithium atoms detected by 2 p - 2 s emission at 6708 A. With certain assumptions (the reader is referred to the original article), less than one quark was found per 1018 nucleons in sea water and 1017 nucleons in seaweed, plankton and oysters. Classical oil-drop experiments (with four kinds of oil light mineral, soya-bean, peanut and cod-liver) were interpreted as less than one quark per 1020 nucleons. Whereas a recent value (18) for deep ocean sediments was below 10 21 per nucleon, much more severe limits were reported (30) in 1966 for sea water (quark/nucleon ratio below 3 10-29) and air (below 5 10-27) with certain assumptions about concentration before entrance in the mass spectrometer. At the same time, the ratio was shown to be below 10 17 for a meteorite. Cook etal. (31) attempted to concentrate quarks by ion-exchange columns in aqueous solution, assuming a position of elution between Na+ and Li+. As discussed in the next section, cations with charge + 2/3 may be more similar to Cs+. Anyhow, values below 10 23 for the quark to nucleon ratio were found for several rocks (e.g., volcanic lava) and minerals. It is clear that if such values below a quark per gramme are accurate, we have a very hard time to find the object but it needs a considerably sophisticated technique to be certain that available quarks are not lost before detection. 

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