TRICYCLE: a new mathematical model for tritium at the global scale

TRICYCLE (for TRItium CYCLE) is a new linear dynamic compartment model that has been successful in reproducing environmental time-series data that show levels of tritium from nuclear weapons testing. Based on the global hydrologic cycle and other geophysical data, TRICYCLE includes (1) separate stratosphere compartments for the northern and southern hemispheres, (2) disaggregation of the troposphere and ocean surface waters into eight latitude zones each, (3) consideration of the different concentrations of tritium in atmospheric water vapor over land and over the ocean (the concentration over land exceeds that over the ocean by a factor of 3-4), and (4) a box-diffusion model for vertical transport in the ocean. The authors have used the model to simulate tritium in precipitation, ocean surface waters, and surface fresh waters (rivers and lakes). When they assume that 50% of the tritium from atmospheric weapons testing was injected directly into the northern stratosphere, the model gives good representations of tritium in the ocean surface waters and the rivers and lakes of the northern hemisphere; moreover, it estimates reasonable approximations to time-series measurements of tritium in marine precipitation taken at specific latitudes; and over the full range of latitudes, its representation of the high-to-low latitude gradient of tritium in marine precipitation is remarkable. Apart from their intrinsic geophysical interest, such models are useful in assessing the collective radiation dose to populations from tritium that is reeased at a particular latitude