Title: Power-law distribution of acid deposition

Authors: Jianlin Zhu, Zhiguo Liu

Addresses: Chemistry Department, Zhuzhou Teachers' College, Zhuzhou, Hunan 412007, China. Chemistry Department, Zhuzhou Teachers' College, Zhuzhou, Hunan 412007, China

Abstract: The scaling behaviour in acid deposition dynamics of 184 monitoring sites under the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) is analysed for the 1978–2001 period. The results show that: the distribution of weekly hydrogen deposition (WHD) is consistent with a power law in two different regimes separated by a crossover WHD (CWHD), and both the CWHD and its probability density increase as the power law commensurate with the mean of WHD series; the distribution of pH values shows a series behaviour similar to that of WHD and can be depicted as a log–linear model with the same form of Gutenberg–Richter model of earthquake occurrence; and the successive time-duration (weeks) of both acid and non-acid rain also obeys a power law, with the average duration of acid rain scaling as a positive power law and that of non-acid rain as a negative power law of average WHD. The power laws in the acid deposition dynamics are considered to be indicators of self-organisation of the atmosphere under environmental pollution stress.

Keywords: acid deposition; frequency–size distributions; power law; self-organised criticality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2003.003309

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2003 Vol.19 No.1, pp.11 - 21

Published online: 21 Aug 2003 *

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