New Developments on RAMS-Hg Model

In this work recent developments in the Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS) version 4.3 (Cotton et al., 2003) coupled with modules describing the atmospheric mercury cycle are presented. The mechanisms that describe reemission of Hg0 from water and soil as well as the wet and dry deposition of mercury species have been implemented in RAMS. A detailed chemistry module has also been tested. The model performance has been examined for a representative summer week during which observations of the wet deposited mercury were available. Model calculations have been compared with observations made during the 14 to 26 August 1997 simulation period in NE USA. An inter-comparison was also performed with the previous version of the model (Voudouri et al., 2004) used over the same domain, and simulation period.