Mercury is present in all segments of the environment. In the atmosphere, vapors of elemental mercury can travel over long distances; therefore, mercury is regarded as a global pollutant, which is toxic to people in all its forms. The greatest danger to human health presents the methylated mercury to which people are exposed by eating fish and other aquatic organisms. Science attempts to explain the mercury speciation, and to evaluate with measurements and models the factors that influence mercury transformations and flow, both within and between individual environmental compartments. Since the northern and central parts of the Adriatic Sea are very polluted by mercury due to the anthropogenic sources, we have developed a numerical model AdriHg for the calculation of the mercury exchange between water and air in the Adriatic Sea. The model was used to indirectly compare the one-way and two-way coupled atmospheric and ocean models. The differences in the quantity of mercury exchange calculated with differently coupled models are negligible. The model was also used to evaluate previous model results and measurements of the exchange in the Adriatic Sea, which will enable a more accurate calculation of the mercury mass balance in the area.
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