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We have developed a new nested-grid mercury (Hg) simulation over North America with a 1/2° latitude by 2/3° longitude horizontal resolution employing the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model. Emissions, chemistry, deposition, and meteorology are self-consistent between the global and nested domains. Compared to the global model (4° latitude by 5° longitude), the nested model shows improved skill at capturing the high spatial and temporal variability of Hg wet deposition over North America observed by the Mercury Deposition Network (MDN) in 2008–2009. The nested simulation resolves features such as higher deposition due to orographic precipitation, land/ocean contrast and and predicts more efficient convective rain scavenging of Hg over the southeast United States. However, the nested model overestimates Hg wet deposition over the Ohio River Valley region (ORV) by 27%. We modify anthropogenic emission speciation profiles in the US EPA National Emission Inventory (NEI) to account for the rapid in-plume reduction of reactive to elemental Hg (IPR simulation). This leads to a decrease in the model bias to −2.3% over the ORV region. Over the contiguous US, the correlation coefficient (r) between MDN observations and our IPR simulation increases from 0.60 to 0.78. The IPR nested simulation generally reproduces the seasonal cycle in surface concentrations of speciated Hg from the Atmospheric Mercury Network (AMNet) and Canadian Atmospheric Mercury Network (CAMNet). In the IPR simulation, annual mean gaseous and particulate-bound Hg(II) are within 140% and 11% of observations, respectively. In contrast …