Acid Rain..?

Question

Where does acid rain commonly occurs in the world?

Where does acid rain commonly occurs in the world? Can acid rain occur naturally ?

Answer 1

Acid rain occurs when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are emitted into the atmosphere, undergo chemical transformations, and are absorbed by water droplets in clouds. The droplets then fall to earth as rain, snow, mist, dry dust, hail, or sleet. This increases the acidity of the soil, and affects the chemical balance of lakes and streams.
The most important gas which leads to acidification is sulphur dioxide. Emissions of nitrogen oxides which are oxidized to form nitric acid are of increasing importance due to stricter controls on emissions of sulphur containing compounds.
The principal natural phenomena that contribute acid-producing gases to the atmosphere are emissions from volcanoes and those from biological processes that occur on the land, in wetlands, and in the oceans. The major biological source of sulphur containing compounds is dimethyl sulfide. The effects of acidic deposits have been detected in glacial ice thousands of years old in remote parts of the globe.
The principal cause of acid rain is sulphuric and nitrogen compounds from human sources, such as electricity generation, factories and motor vehicles. Coal power plants are one of the most polluting. The gases can be carried hundreds of kilometres in the atmosphere before they are converted to acids and deposited. Factories used to have short funnels to let out smoke, but this caused many problems, so now, factories have longer smoke funnels. The problem with this is those pollutants get carried far off, where it creates more destruction.

Answer 2

I agree in principle with mnsrzafar's answer. I would have used a few different words but that is an excellent answer.

The one thing that I think needs to be added to his answer is an acknowledgment that even without the pollution (both natural and man made) to the atmosphere, in other words, if the atmosphere was totally free of all pollutants, rain would still be a weak nitric acid. That is just due to NO2 reacting to water vapor in the air to produce nitrate acid HNO3. Sunlight does cause most of nitric acid to oxidize into other compounds but rain in it's purest form will still test as slightly acidic.

I never liked the term acid rain too much. I often have used the term "poisoned rain" in describing it.

Answer 3

Acid rain is any form of precipitation---rain ,snow ,sleet, fog-which contains high levels of sulphuric acid and nitric acid.The two important air pollutants which produce these acids are sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide .These pollutants combine with the water vapour in the air and produce the above acids.
The sulphur dioxide gas is emitted by power stations and automobiles whereas burning of fossil fuels contribute to both nitrogen and sulphur emissions.Volcanic eruption is also considered as one of the sources of these pollutants.Occurance of acid rain has been reported both in Canada and USA.

Answer 4

Acid rain forms when falling water drops mix with Carbon, sulfer and Nitrogen compounds in the gases that are effluents of industrial areas and from Volcanoes, the clean water dopes and the effluent gas will form Diluted carbonates, sulfuric, and nitric acids and eventually the rain reaches the surface of the ground in the form of diluted acids.

So acid rains exists in industrial areas and around volcanic areas when the volcanoes emits gases.

Answer 5

It was ten years ago.