Colleen Jones
Utah State University, UT·Earth & Environmental Science
Mercury is released into the air in its elemental form. There it reacts with other chemicals, called oxidants, and turns into divalent mercury, a more water-soluble form.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
atmospheric mercury
mercury oxidation
divalent mercury
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Conduct a year-long field campaign near Salt Lake City measuring elemental and divalent mercury, related oxidants, and chemical and weather variables, using a dual-channel continuous mercury system that avoids the low bias of standard methods.
- Identify which mercury reaction mechanisms and rates minimize mismatch between model and measurements, using the zero-dimensional F0AM chemistry model.
- Update the mercury oxidation chemistry in the GEOS-Chem atmospheric model with the F0AM-derived parameters to bring its predictions closer to measured values.
More about the research
It is still uncertain which oxidants drive this conversion and how fast it happens. A further problem is that standard instruments have been found to measure divalent mercury too low, which affects nearly all past measurements. Getting this chemistry right matters for understanding how mercury affects human health.
Why it matters
Better data on how mercury changes form in the air could help policymakers and state regulators assess its effects on human health. The work also refines a widely used atmospheric model, which could improve predictions of mercury and related pollutants such as halogens, ozone and nitrogen oxides.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christopher Butenhoff
Portland State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Intercalibrate early-1980s ethane measurements from the Oregon Graduate Institute global network with recent NOAA surface flask data so that historic and modern records can be compared.
Patricia Cleary
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop and integrate an uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) vertical profiler, including a nitrogen dioxide (NO2) instrument built with NOAA, to measure ozone and NO2 above the Lake Michigan shoreline.
John Mak
Stony Brook University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure the specific volatile organic compounds over greater New York, including those from volatile chemical products, using instruments aboard the NSF C-130 aircraft.
The school
Utah State University: 5 labs on PI Pages, $451M a year on research, 126 research doctorates a year.
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