The Estimated Six-Year Mercury Dry Deposition Across North America.

Dry deposition of atmospheric mercury (Hg) to various land covers surrounding 24 sites in North America was estimated for the years 2009 to 2014. Depending on location, multiyear mean annual Hg dry deposition was estimated to range from 5.1 to 23.8 µg m-2 yr-1 to forested canopies, 2.6 to 20.8 µg m-2 yr-1 to nonforest vegetated canopies, 2.4 to 11.2 µg m-2 yr-1 to urban and built up land covers, and 1.0 to 3.2 µg m-2 yr-1 to water surfaces. In the rural or remote environment in North America, annual Hg dry deposition to vegetated surfaces is dominated by leaf uptake of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), contrary to what was commonly assumed in earlier studies which frequently omitted GEM dry deposition as an important process. Dry deposition exceeded wet deposition by a large margin in all of the seasons except in the summer at the majority of the sites. GEM dry deposition over vegetated surfaces will not decrease at the same pace, and sometimes may even increase with decreasing anthropogenic emissions, suggesting that Hg emission reductions should be a long-term policy sustained by global cooperation.

Nested aplanats for practical maximum-performance solar concentration.

Dual-mirror aplanats provide efficient, ultracompact, high-irradiance solar concentration and were recently developed for concentrator photovoltaics. However, inherent limitations place the focus inside the optic. This mandates a terminal dielectric concentrator to extract concentrated sunlight to the solar cell outside the optic, and an optical bond to the cell. Can a modified design strategy site the focus outside the optic (eliminating the need for an extractor and optical bond) without compromising concentrator compactness, low shading losses, or pragmatic manufacturability? We show how judiciously nested dual-mirror aplanats can satisfy all these objectives, with raytrace simulations confirming performance tantamount to the best conventional aplanats.