Found 9941 publications. Showing page 322 of 398:
The current report provides a short overview of previous years’ studies on long-term trends in O3, NO2 and PM and the role of meteorological variability for the concentration of these pollutants. The previous studies on the link between trends and meteorology has shown that these links could be estimated by a careful design of model setups using CTMs (chemical transport models). The conclusions from this work is that CTMs are certainly useful tools for explaining pollutant trends in terms of the separate impact of individual physio-chemical drivers such as emissions and meteorology although computationally demanding. The statistical GAM model that have been developed as part of the recent ETC/ACM and ETC/ATNI tasks could be considered as complementary to the use of CTMs for separating the influence of meteorological variability from other processes. The main limitation of the statistical model is that it contains no parameterisation of the real physio-chemical processes and secondly, that it relies on a local assumption, i.e. that the observed daily concentrations could be estimated based on the local meteorological data. We found clear differences in model performance both with respect to geographical area and atmospheric species. In general, the best performance was found for O3 (although not for peak levels) with gradually lower performance for NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 in that order. With respect to area, the model produced the best predictions for Central Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria, Czech Republic) and poorer agreement with observations in southern Europe. Although the GAM model did not detect many meteorology induced long-term trends in the data, the model is well suited for separating the influence of meteorology from the other driving forces, such as emissions and boundary conditions. The GAM model thus provides robust and smooth long-term trend functions corrected for meteorology as well as the perturbations from year to year, reflecting the variability in weather conditions. One could consider to define a set of performance criteria to decide if the GAM model is applicable for a specific station and parameter.
ETC/ATNI
2020
Monitoring of long-range transported air pollutants in Norway. Annual Report 2019.
This report presents results from the monitoring of atmospheric composition and deposition of air pollution in 2019, and focuses on main components in air and precipitation, particulate and gaseous phase of inorganic constituents, particulate carbonaceous matter, ground level ozone and particulate matter. In 2019, it was an unusual wide-spread episode during April causing high concentrations of most pollutants at several sites.
NILU
2020
2020
2020
Skogens helsetilstand i Norge. Resultater fra skogskadeovervåkingen i 2019
Skogens helsetilstand påvirkes i stor grad av klima og værforhold, enten direkte ved tørke, frost og vind, eller indirekte ved at klimaet påvirker omfanget av soppsykdommer og insektangrep.
Klimaendringene og den forventede økningen i klimarelaterte skogskader gir store utfordringer for forvaltningen av framtidas skogressurser. Det samme gjør invaderende skadegjørere, både allerede etablerte arter og nye som kan komme til Norge i nær framtid. I denne rapporten presenteres
resultater fra skogskadeovervåkingen i Norge i 2019 og trender over tid.....
NIBIO
2020
As part of the ongoing key comparison BIPM.QM-K1, a comparison has been performed between the ozone standard of Norway maintained by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) and the common reference standard of the key comparison, maintained by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM). The instruments have been compared over a nominal ozone amount-of-substance fraction range from 0 nmol/mol to 500 nmol/mol.
2020
Grouping strategies are needed for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in part, because it would be time and resource intensive to test and evaluate the more than 4700 PFAS on the global market on a chemical-by-chemical basis. In this paper we review various grouping strategies that could be used to inform actions on these chemicals and outline the motivations, advantages and disadvantages for each. Grouping strategies are subdivided into (1) those based on the intrinsic properties of the PFAS (e.g. persistence, bioaccumulation potential, toxicity, mobility, molecular size) and (2) those that inform risk assessment through estimation of cumulative exposure and/or effects. The most precautionary grouping approach of those reviewed within this article suggests phasing out PFAS based on their high persistence alone (the so-called “P-sufficient” approach). The least precautionary grouping approach reviewed advocates only grouping PFAS for risk assessment that have the same toxicological effects, modes and mechanisms of action, and elimination kinetics, which would need to be well documented across different PFAS. It is recognised that, given jurisdictional differences in chemical assessment philosophies and methodologies, no one strategy will be generally acceptable. The guiding question we apply to the reviewed grouping strategies is: grouping for what purpose? The motivation behind the grouping (e.g. determining use in products vs. setting guideline levels for contaminated environments) may lead to different grouping decisions. This assessment provides the necessary context for grouping strategies such that they can be adopted as they are, or built on further, to protect human and environmental health from potential PFAS-related effects.
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
2020
Active sampling methodology for atmospheric monitoring of cyclic volatile methylsiloxanes (cVMS) was improved to reduce sampling artifacts. A new sorbent, ABN Express (ABN), was evaluated for storage stability and measurement accuracy. Storage stability of cVMS on ABN showed less than 1% degradation of the individual 13C-labelled octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (13C4-D4), decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (13C5-D5) and dodecamethylcyclohexasiloxane (13C6-D6) after 14 days storage at room temperature and at −20 °C whereas significant degradation was observed on ENV+ sorbent at room temperature (37–62 %) and −20 °C (9–16 %). 13C4-D4 formed on ENV+ spiked with 13C5-D5, and both 13C4-D4 and 13C5-D5 formed on ENV+ spiked with 13C6-D6. However, this was not observed on the ABN sorbent. Performance of ABN was compared to ENV+ through an 8-month Arctic sampling campaign at the Zeppelin Observatory (Ny Ålesund, Svalbard). Good agreement between ABN and ENV+ was observed for D4 in the spring/summer months. However, D5 and D6 was found to be consistently higher on the ABN sorbent during this time period with D6 showing the greatest deviation. During the winter months, larger deviations were observed between ABN and ENV+ sorbents with a factor of 4 times higher atmospheric concentrations of both D5 and D6 found on ABN; indicating sorbent related degradation on ENV+. Our findings show that the ABN sorbent provides greater stability and accuracy for atmospheric monitoring of cVMS. Implications of these improvements towards atmospheric fate processes will be discussed.
Elsevier
2020
2020
Nanotechnology has enabled the discovery of a multitude of novel materials exhibiting unique physicochemical (PChem) properties compared to their bulk analogues. These properties have led to a rapidly increasing range of commercial applications; this, however, may come at a cost, if an association to long-term health and environmental risks is discovered or even just perceived. Many nanomaterials (NMs) have not yet had their potential adverse biological effects fully assessed, due to costs and time constraints associated with the experimental assessment, frequently involving animals. Here, the available NM libraries are analyzed for their suitability for integration with novel nanoinformatics approaches and for the development of NM specific Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) for human and environmental risk assessment, all within the NanoSolveIT cloud-platform. These established and well-characterized NM libraries (e.g. NanoMILE, NanoSolutions, NANoREG, NanoFASE, caLIBRAte, NanoTEST and the Nanomaterial Registry (>2000 NMs)) contain physicochemical characterization data as well as data for several relevant biological endpoints, assessed in part using harmonized Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) methods and test guidelines. Integration of such extensive NM information sources with the latest nanoinformatics methods will allow NanoSolveIT to model the relationships between NM structure (morphology), properties and their adverse effects and to predict the effects of other NMs for which less data is available. The project specifically addresses the needs of regulatory agencies and industry to effectively and rapidly evaluate the exposure, NM hazard and risk from nanomaterials and nano-enabled products, enabling implementation of computational ‘safe-by-design’ approaches to facilitate NM commercialization.
Elsevier
2020
2020
MetVed v.2.0. Improvement and update of the MetVed emission model for residential wood combustion
This report presents the update of the MetVed-model (Grythe et al., 2019). Among the updates are new emission factors and several new species that include climate gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O). There is now a new parameter that describes the emission altitude and a new and improved time variation. Activity data has been updated to the most recent year (2019), which also has required updates to the model and model input variables. The largest update has been the holiday cabin emission module, which is an entirely new addition. Emissions from cabins differ in several ways from residential emissions. The most notable difference is that cabins are spread over more rural areas and are more dispersed than the residential dwellings. The model differentiates alpine and coastal cabins, which is an important distinction as a high density of cabins exists along the coast and they are mainly used during summer.
NILU
2020
This report details the methodology and assumptions for the ETC/CME report: A life cycle perspective on the benefits of renewable electricity generation. In that report, gross avoided potential environmental impacts are estimated for electricity production in the EU-27 in the period 2005-2018. Avoided potential impacts are calculated by comparing the actual data with a counterfactual scenario where electricity production from Renewable Energy Sources is frozen at 2005 levels.
The overall methodological approach to the study is described in this report together with a short mathematical treatment of the calculation of life cycle indicators and subsequent scaling up to produce the two scenarios required to estimate gross avoided potential impacts. A short overview of data sources used in the study is included as well as a discussion and recommendations for the future.
ETC/CME
2020
Norwegian Meteorological Institute
2020
2020