Rapid metal pollutant deposition from the volcanic plume of Kīlauea, Hawai’i

Abstract

Long-lived basaltic volcanic eruptions are a globally important source of environmentally reactive, volatile metal pollutant elements such as selenium, cadmium and lead. The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea, Hawai’i produced exceptionally high discharge of metal pollutants, and was an unprecedented opportunity to track them from vent to deposition. Here we show, through geochemical sampling of the plume that volatile metal pollutants were depleted in the plume up to 100 times faster than refractory species, such as magnesium and iron. We propose that this rapid wet deposition of complexes containing reactive and potentially toxic volatile metal pollutants may disproportionately impact localised areas close to the vent. We infer that the relationship between volatility and solubility is an important control on the atmospheric behaviour of elements. We suggest that assessment of hazards from volcanic emissions should account for heterogeneous plume depletion of metal pollutants.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Ilyinskaya, E https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3663-9506 Mason, E Wieser, PE Holland, L Liu, EJ Mather, TA Edmonds, M Whitty, RCW Elias, T Nadeau, PA Schneider, D McQuaid, JB https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8702-0415 Allen, SE Oppenheimer, C Kern, C Damby, D
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Environmental impact; Geochemistry; Natural hazards; Volcanology
Dates:	Accepted: 12 March 2021 Published (online): 4 May 2021 Published: 4 May 2021
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst of Geophysics and Tectonics (IGT) (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/M021130/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P015271/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/R009465/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S00436X/1 Aerosol Society Not Known
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	04 Mar 2021 14:25
Last Modified:	24 Oct 2023 09:51
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s43247-021-00146-2
Related URLs:	Dataset Erratum/Corrigendum
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:171751