Understanding hops of persistent organic pollutants over oceans

To get to remote regions, these pollutants undergo long-range atmospheric transport that introduces them to the oceans, where they become integrated into the food web. Studies have suggested that when persistent organic pollutants travel, they move in stages through a repeated process of volatilization and deposition. To learn more about this "grasshopper effect," Jurado and Dachs focus on a class of persistent organic pollutants called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB).

Through studies of the grasshopper effect's seasonal variability and long-range atmospheric transport potentials, the authors find that the number of hops taken by a chemical over the oceans is driven by seasonal biogeochemical processes occurring in the water column.

For example, the transport of PCBs to the remote Arctic is maximized during seasons of low primary productivity. Such studies have important implications for understanding the distribution and fractionation processes of persistent organic pollutants on a global scale.-American Geophysical Union