Dynamics in Diffusive Emissions of Dissolved Gases from Groundwater Induced by Fluctuated Ground Surface Temperature.

During the lateral transport with subsurface flow, amounts of manufactured volatile organic chemicals and gases dissolved in groundwater are emitted into the atmosphere via upward diffusion through soils. Quantifying gas emissions is important for assessing environmental risk associated with these constituents (e.g., air pollution and global warming). It is widely recognized that the temperature would affect gas spreading in soils, which in turn regulates the gas emission from groundwater. However, the upward diffusive gas emission induced by the fluctuated ground surface temperature (GST) remains unexplored. A coupled heat transfer and gas transport model is developed to investigate emissions of tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and N 2 O, a typical manufactured volatile organic chemical and a natural gas, from groundwater with seasonally fluctuating GSTs. The results indicate that both PCE and N 2 O emissions vary significantly from month to month. Moreover, fluctuations of emissions lag obviously behind the fluctuation of GST due to the damping effects of both capillary fringe and soil sorption. The proposed model agrees with the observed data from a monolith lysimeter experiment well. The model is also applied to the estimations of N 2 O emissions from 12 aquifers in Walloon Region, Belgium. The estimated N 2 O emission is 12.6 μg N/m 2 /d that falls in the estimated range (9.0-21.5 μg N/m 2 /d) using the IPCC emission factor approach that commonly accounts for the N 2 O emission of groundwater discharge to surface water only. It suggests that the upward diffusion is non-negligible for estimations of N 2 O emission from groundwater.