Found 10066 publications. Showing page 22 of 403:
Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Servicice
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SuperDARN Radar Wind Observations of Eastward-Propagating Planetary Waves
An array of SuperDARN meteor radars at northern high latitudes was used to investigate the sources and characteristics of eastward-propagating planetary waves (EPWs) at 95 km, with a focus on wintertime. The nine radars provided the daily mean meridional winds and their anomalies over 180 degrees of longitude, and these anomalies were separated into eastward and westward waves using a fast Fourier transform (FFT) method to extract the planetary wave components of zonal wavenumbers 1 and 2. Years when a sudden stratospheric warming event with an elevated stratopause (ES-SSW) occurred during the winter were contrasted with years without such events and composited through superposed epoch analysis. The results show that EPWs are a ubiquitous—and unexpected—feature of meridional wind variability near 95 km. Present even in non-ES-SSW years, they display a regular annual cycle peaking in January or February, depending on the zonal wavenumber. In years when an ES-SSW occurred, the EPWs were highly variable but enhanced before and after the onset.
2024
Monitoring air quality in ports and nearby cities is crucial to understanding the role of emissions from shipping and other port activities. This report analyzes air quality in 23 European ports, revealing limited observations in and around port areas. Only 5 of the 23 ports had at least one air quality sampling point for NO2 and PM10 inside the port area. Concentrations in nearby cities can be up to double (NO2) and 74% higher (PM10) when the wind comes from the port. EEA air quality maps showed higher annual mean NO2 concentrations in port areas compared to surrounding regions, with some ports exceeding the 2030 limit value of 20 µg/m³. Annual mean PM10 concentrations were also higher in port areas, with nine ports exceeding the new limit value. The limited number of sampling points makes it challenging to assess trends in NO2 and PM10 concentrations. International shipping emissions significantly contribute to NO2 levels in port cities, as shown by pollution episodes in Antwerpen and Barcelona.
ETC/HE
2024
2024
Extracellular Vesicles as Next-Generation Diagnostics and Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) hold great promise for clinical application as new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities. This paper describes major GMP-based upstream and downstream manufacturing processes for EV large-scale production, also focusing on post-processing technologies such as surface bioengineering and uploading studies to yield novel EV-based diagnostics and advanced therapy medicinal products. This paper also focuses on the quality, safety, and efficacy issues of the bioengineered EV drug candidates before first-in-human studies. Because clinical trials involving extracellular vesicles are on the global rise, this paper encompasses different clinical studies registered on clinical-trial register platforms, with varying levels of advancement, highlighting the growing interest in EV-related clinical programs. Navigating the regulatory affairs of EVs poses real challenges, and obtaining marketing authorization for EV-based medicines remains complex due to the lack of specific regulatory guidelines for such novel products. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art regulatory knowledge to date on EV-based diagnostics and medicinal products, highlighting further research and global regulatory needs for the safe and reliable implementation of bioengineered EVs as diagnostic and therapeutic tools in clinical settings. Post-marketing pharmacovigilance for EV-based medicinal products is also presented, mainly addressing such topics as risk assessment and risk management.
2024
2024
The report provides the annual update of the European air quality concentration maps and population and vegetation exposure estimates for human health related indicators of pollutants PM10 (annual average, 90.4 percentile of daily means), PM2.5 (annual average), ozone (93.2 percentile of maximum daily 8-hour means, peak season average of maximum daily 8-hour means, SOMO35, SOMO10), NO2 (annual average) and benzo(a)pyrene (annual average), and vegetation related ozone indicators (AOT40 for vegetation and for forests) for the year 2022. The report contains also maps of Phytotoxic ozone dose (PODY) for selected crops (wheat, potato and tomato) and trees (spruce and beech) and NOx annual average map for the same year 2022. The ozone map of peak season average of maximum daily 8-hour means is presented for the first time. The trends in exposure estimates in the period 2005–2022 are summarized. The analysis for 2022 is based on the interpolation of the annual statistics of the 2022 observational data reported by the EEA member and cooperating countries and other voluntary reporting countries and stored in the Air Quality e-reporting database, complemented, when needed, with measurements from additional sources. The mapping method is the Regression – Interpolation – Merging Mapping (RIMM). It combines monitoring data, chemical transport model results and other supplementary data using linear regression model followed by kriging of its residuals (residual kriging). The paper presents the mapping results and gives an uncertainty analysis of the interpolated maps. It also presents concentration change in 2022 in comparison to the five-year average 2017-2021 using the difference maps and exposure estimates.
ETC/HE
2024
2024
2024
FLEXPART version 11: improved accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility
Numerical methods and simulation codes are essential for the advancement of our understanding of complex atmospheric processes. As technology and computer hardware continue to evolve, the development of sophisticated code is vital for accurate and efficient simulations. In this paper, we present the recent advancements made in the FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model (FLEXPART), a Lagrangian particle dispersion model, which has been used in a wide range of atmospheric transport studies over the past 3 decades, extending from tracing radionuclides from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, to inverse modelling of greenhouse gases, and to the study of atmospheric moisture cycles.
This version of FLEXPART includes notable improvements in accuracy and computational efficiency. (1) By leveraging the native vertical coordinates of European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) instead of interpolating to terrain-following coordinates, we achieved an improvement in trajectory accuracy, leading to a ∼8 %–10 % reduction in conservation errors for quasi-conservative quantities like potential vorticity. (2) The shape of aerosol particles is now accounted for in the gravitational settling and dry-deposition calculation, increasing the simulation accuracy for non-spherical aerosol particles such as microplastic fibres. (3) Wet deposition has been improved by the introduction of a new below-cloud scheme, by a new cloud identification scheme, and by improving the interpolation of precipitation. (4) Functionality from a separate version of FLEXPART, the FLEXPART CTM (chemical transport model), is implemented, which includes linear chemical reactions. Additionally, the incorporation of Open Multi-Processing parallelisation makes the model better suited for handling large input data. Furthermore, we introduced novel methods for the input and output of particle properties and distributions. Users now have the option to run FLEXPART with more flexible particle input data, providing greater adaptability for specific research scenarios (e.g. effective backward simulations corresponding to satellite retrievals). Finally, a new user manual (https://flexpart.img.univie.ac.at/docs/, last access: 11 September 2024) and restructuring of the source code into modules will serve as a basis for further development.
2024