I'm interested in understanding likely variation in hydrogen sulfide concentration near oil and gas wells due to oxidation in the atmosphere, and I'm having difficulty finding information about hydrogen sulfide oxidation under various conditions. Does anyone have a good resource or happen to know what rates would be under high UV, low UV, with acidic rain or humidity, with high particulate matter, etc?
Reduced sulfur compounds generally have relatively short lifetimes in the atmosphere (days). A residence time of 4.4 days has been reported by Warneck (1988) for H2S in the troposphere. As you mention, rates are dependent on redox conditions in the atmosphere. More info. is available in related texts.
I would suggest however, if your interest is only in localized concentration variance (10s of km) a more important determinant is atmospheric dispersion. At the local scale, wind patterns and atmospheric conditions are the major natural factors shaping concentration variance and contaminant migration.
Gaussian based plume modeling could be used to estimate concentrations (and compare to measured) to help screen risk and understand contaminant movement in this context. The following from UW introduces the topic well (http://courses.washington.edu/cee490/PlumeD4.pdf). Free tools from the USEPA or hand calcs. could be adopted for these purposes.
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