Found 10463 publications. Showing page 399 of 419:
Little is known about the exposure of aquatic biota to tire and road wear particles (TRWP) washed away from roads. Mussels were exposed for 7 days to model TRWP (m-TRWP), produced by milling tire tread particles with pure sand, and analyzed for 21 tire-related compounds by liquid chromatography-high resolution-mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). Upon exposure to 0.5 g/L of m-TRWP, 15 compounds were determined from 944 μg/kg wet weight (diphenylguanidine, DPG) over 18 μg/kg for an oxidation product of N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6-PPDQ) to 0.6 μg/kg (4-hydroxydiphenyl amine). Transfer into mussels was highest for PTPD, DTPD and 6-PPDQ and orders of magnitude lower for 6-PPD. During 7 days depuration the concentration of all determined chemicals decreased to remaining concentrations between ~50 % (PTPD, DTPD) and 6 % (6-PPD). Suspect and non-target screening found 37 additional transformation products (TPs) of tire additives, many of which did not decrease in concentration during depuration, among them ten likely TPs of DPG, two of 6-PPD and PTPD and two of 1,2-dihydro-2,2,4-trimethylquinoline. A wide variety of chemicals is taken up by mussels upon exposure to m-TRWP and a wide range of TPs is formed, enabling the differentiation of biomarkers of exposure to TRWP and biomarkers of exposure to tire-associated chemicals.
2025
2025
The winter of 2023/24 exhibited remarkable stratospheric dynamics with multiple sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs). Based on the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis (ERA5) polar-cap-averaged 10 hPa zonal wind, three major SSWs are identified. Two of the three SSWs were short-lived, lasting under 7 d. In this study, we give an overview of the three SSWs that occurred in the winter of 2023/24 and focus on the impact of tropospheric forcing on their duration. Blocking high-pressure systems are shown to modulate wave activity flux into the stratosphere through interactions with tropospheric planetary waves, depending on their location. The rapid termination of the first SSW (14–19 January 2024) is linked to a developing high-pressure system over the North Pacific. The second SSW (16–22 February 2024) terminated quickly due to more contributing factors, one of which was a high-pressure system that developed over the Far East. The third SSW (3–28 March 2024) was a long-duration canonical event extending to levels below 100 hPa. In contrast to the two short-lived SSWs in the winter of 2023/24, tropospheric forcing was sustained around the SSW onset in March 2024, allowing a long event to develop. We also note that conditions for these SSWs were particularly favorable due to external factors, including an easterly Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO), the presence of El Niño conditions of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, and the proximity to the solar maximum.
2025
2025
Revidert tiltaksutredning for lokal luftkvalitet i Tromsø
Stiftelsen NILU har, i samarbeid med Transportøkonomisk institutt (TØI), utarbeidet en revidert tiltaksutredning for lokal luftkvalitet i Tromsø kommune for perioden 2025 til 2030. Arbeidet omfatter en kartlegging av luftkvaliteten basert på trafikk-, utslipps- og spredningsberegninger for PM10, PM2,5 og NO2 for Dagens situasjon 2023, Referansesituasjonen 2030 og 2030 med tiltak. Det er beregnet risiko for overskridelse av dagens grenseverdier i forurensningsforskriften og for grenseverdier i nytt EU-direktiv som ennå ikke er tatt inn i norsk lovgiving.
NILU
2025
2025
2025
NO-Hur: the fate of a forest in trouble
An update on the carbon gains and losses at Hurdal
2025
2025
Arctic food and energy security at the crossroads
Arctic food systems blend Traditional Ecological Knowledge with modern, often energy-intensive influences, triggered by colonization. Food systems’ future depends on alignment of tradition with innovation, facilitation of resilience and a heritage-driven interaction with the global economy – at a pace determined by local communities.
2025
This report examines the impact of air pollution from residential wood combustion on health in the Nordic countries.Residential wood combustion is a major contributor to premature deaths and health issues. The number of premature deaths is expected to decrease from 1,600 in 2019 to 1,200 by 2030, with health costs dropping from EUR 3.2 bn. to EUR 2.5 bn. This improvement is due to fewer and newer, less polluting appliances, and better energy efficiency in homes.
Two additional scenarios for 2030 reflecting national differences were evaluated.
Technology Scenario: Faster replacement of old appliances, reducing premature deaths by 190 and health costs by EUR 390 mil.
Zone-Based Scenario: Bans in densely populated areas, reducing premature deaths by 240 and health costs by EUR 510 mil.
Mitigation in densely populated areas offers greater health benefits than national-level efforts.
Nordic Council of Ministers
2025
2025
Sex and Gender Dimensions in Hazard and Risk Assessment of Engineered Nanomaterials
The knowledge on hazards and risks connected to human exposure to engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) is still very limited, despite several decades of research and regulatory efforts at the international level. In particular, sex/gender‐related responses to such exposure have not been clearly articulated so far in any of the existing guidance documents or regulatory relevant opinions provided to the parties involved in the risk assessment and risk management of ENMs. We aimed to demonstrate the relevance of the sex/gender dimension for the characterization of the risks and hazards associated with ENMs by analyzing existing scientific data on sex‐related differences in response to ENMs exposure. This was achieved by performing an extensive review of in vivo mammalian toxicity studies published in PubMed and Web of Science databases. Further analysis was performed only for data reported in publications that satisfied scientific quality criteria assessed using the GUIDEnano approach. Finally, we demonstrated the importance of the sex/gender dimension for safety testing of ENMs in the future and provided recommendations on how to include the sex/gender dimension in toxicity testing of ENMs to ensure precise, transparent, and reliable conclusions in the process of hazard and risk assessments. This article is categorized under: Toxicology and Regulatory Issues in Nanomedicine > Toxicology of Nanomaterials Toxicology and Regulatory Issues in Nanomedicine > Regulatory and Policy Issues in Nanomedicine
2025
Melkøya ferskvann, nedbør, vegetasjon og jord 2024
I 2024 var det igjen tid for den tradisjonelle overvåkningen av ferskvann. I forbindelse med endringer i produksjonen og mulige økte utslipp av kvikksølv ble det gjort enkelte endringer i programmet for ferskvann samtidig som det ble iverksatt undersøkelser av kvikksølv (Hg), bly (Pb) og polysykliske aromatiske hydrokarboner (PAH) i nedbør, vegetasjon og jord. I det nye programmet er det god samlokalisering mellom prøvetakingsstasjoner for ferskvann, nedbør, vegetasjon og jordprøver.
Det ble gjennomført innsamling av prøver i ferskvann, nedbør, vegetasjon og jord fra starten av september.
Akvaplan-niva
2025
State of the Climate in 2024: Global Climate
For the second year in a row, record-high global surface temperatures were set in 2024, according to all six global temperature datasets assessed in this report (Berkeley Earth, GISTEMP, HadCRUT5, the NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis [NOAAGlobalTemp], ERA5, and the Japanese Reanalysis for Three Quarters of a Century [JRA-3Q]). The last time consecutive years set records was in 2015 and 2016 when a strong El Niño similarly boosted global temperatures. The last 10 years (2015–24) are now the warmest 10 in the instrumental record—warmer than the 2011–20 average—and hence “more likely than not warmer than any multi-century period after the last interglacial period, roughly 125,000 years ago” (Gulev et al. 2021). The increased energy within the climate system is detectable at the top of the atmosphere, with the outgoing longwave radiation anomaly continuing to be above the range of natural variability.
During 2024, El Niño conditions that had been present since the middle of 2023 faded to neutral by the end of the year. The warm conditions observed around the globe over the last two years had impacts across the climate system, as demonstrated by many of the metrics presented in this chapter. Other temperature metrics also reached record levels over the instrumental periods assessed in this chapter: over the oceans at night, on the surfaces of lakes, and in the lower troposphere as well as measures of equivalent temperature (which considers the moisture contribution to heat), and high and low temperature extremes.
The frozen parts of Earth responded with permafrost temperatures continuing to reach record-high levels in many locations, and the active-layer thickness (the portion that melts and refreezes annually) also increasing at most sites. Repeated high temperatures over the European Alps during recent summers has led to large increases in rock glacier velocities in that region. The Great Lakes had much-below-average ice cover over the 2023/24 winter, and there was below-average snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere. All 58 reference glaciers across five continents lost ice during 2024, resulting in the greatest average ice loss in the record, which began in 1970. One more glacier was also declared extinct during 2024.
Higher global temperatures impacted the water cycle. Although lower than 2023 values, water evaporation from land in the Northern Hemisphere reached one of the highest annual values on record, in line with the long-term increasing trend. Specific humidity reached record levels over land and ocean, and relative humidity over both domains was higher than 2023. There was little relief from high humid-heat conditions, with the frequency of high humid-heat days at a record level and intensity at the second-highest level in the record—only a fraction of a degree cooler than that of 2023. The global atmosphere contained the greatest amount of water vapor in the record, and over one-fifth of the globe recorded their highest values. This far exceeded 2023, where only one-tenth of the globe experienced record-high total column water vapor. Rainfall was globally high; 2024 was the third-wettest year since records began in 1983. However, rainfall over land was close to average, while over the ocean it was the fourth-wettest year on record (following 2015, 2016, and 1998). Extreme rainfall, as characterized by the annual maximum daily rainfall over land, was the wettest on record. Averaged globally (4190 lakes), lakes had a small increase in water storage, and regionally, over 40% of monitored lakes showed significant changes in storage and level.
The effects of ongoing droughts in southern Africa and in North and South America can be seen in the soil moisture and water storage patterns. They are also apparent in the river discharge and runoff levels, which are topics that will be covered in the chapter after a few years of absence. Globally, however, drought severity and extent decreased from the record set in 2023.
Atmospheric concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide [CO2], methane [CH4], nitrous oxide [N2O]) again all reached record levels, with a record-equal annual increase in the annual change of CO2 concentrations. However, concentrations of ozone-depleting substances continued to decline, corroborated by stratospheric ozone columns well above the 1998–2008 average, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, stratospheric aerosols remained high because of the Ruang eruption in April 2024, affecting the atmospheric transmission of solar radiation over Hawaii later in the year, and the ongoing effects from the Hunga eruption in 2022. The latter eruption also caused the ongoing elevated stratospheric water vapor concentrations.
Our planet’s surface albedo continued to darken with increased plant growth and decreased snow and ice cover. Plants responded to the warmer temperatures with some of the earliest starts to spring in the record over Europe—one to two weeks earlier than the 2000–20 baseline—and a warm autumn resulted in a much longer leaf-on season. Severe wildfire seasons occurred in South America (the worst since 2010), Canada (for the second consecutive year), and the Arctic, contributing to the second-highest atmospheric carbon monoxide concentrations since 2003 and the highest tropospheric aerosol optical depth since 2019, at 550 nm.
This year’s iteration of the Global Climate chapter features two Sidebars, both of which present new topics that have not yet been explored in the report. The first covers the ability of satellite products to monitor changes in land surface temperature extremes and identify hotspots where regions of Earth are becoming uninhabitable. This Sidebar also discusses the importance of dataset stability for climate studies, as well as the correlation of land surface temperature and air temperature anomalies. The second Sidebar complements the section on greenhouse gas concentrations by examining short-lived climate forcers—compounds that have lifetimes ranging from a few hours to a few decades.
As usual in the Global Climate chapter, Plate 2.1 shows maps of global annual anomalies for many of the variables and metrics presented herein. Many of these variables are also presented as time series in Plate 1.1. Most sections now use the 1991–2020 climatological reference period, in line with the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) recommendations, although this reference period is not possible for all datasets due to their length or legacy processing methods.
2025
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2025
Unchanged PM2.5 levels over Europe during COVID-19 were buffered by ammonia
The coronavirus outbreak in 2020 had a devastating impact on human life, albeit a positive effect on the environment, reducing emissions of primary aerosols and trace gases and improving air quality. In this paper, we present inverse modelling estimates of ammonia emissions during the European lockdowns of 2020 based on satellite observations. Ammonia has a strong seasonal cycle and mainly originates from agriculture. We further show how changes in ammonia levels over Europe, in conjunction with decreases in traffic-related atmospheric constituents, modulated PM2.5. The key result of this study is a −9.8 % decrease in ammonia emissions in the period of 15 March–30 April 2020 (lockdown period) compared to the same period in 2016–2019, attributed to restrictions related to the global pandemic. We further calculate the delay in the evolution of the ammonia emissions in 2020 before, during, and after lockdowns, using a sophisticated comparison of the evolution of ammonia emissions during the same time periods for the reference years (2016–2019). Our analysis demonstrates a clear delay in the evolution of ammonia emissions of −77 kt, which was mainly observed in the countries that imposed the strictest travel, social, and working measures. Despite the general drop in emissions during the first half of 2020 and the delay in the evolution of the emissions during the lockdown period, satellite and ground-based observations showed that the European levels of ammonia increased. On one hand, this was due to the reductions in SO2 and NOx (precursors of the atmospheric acids with which ammonia reacts) that caused less binding and thus less chemical removal of ammonia (smaller loss – higher lifetime). On the other hand, the majority of the emissions persisted because ammonia mainly originates from agriculture, a primary production sector that was influenced very little by the lockdown restrictions. Despite the projected drop in various atmospheric aerosols and trace gases, PM2.5 levels stayed unchanged or even increased in Europe due to a number of reasons that were attributed to the complicated system. Higher water vapour during the European lockdowns favoured more sulfate production from SO2 and OH (gas phase) or O3 (aqueous phase). Ammonia first reacted with sulfuric acid, also producing sulfate. Then, the continuously accumulating free ammonia reacted with nitric acid, shifting the equilibrium reaction towards particulate nitrate. In high-free-ammonia atmospheric conditions such as those in Europe during the 2020 lockdowns, a small reduction in NOx levels drives faster oxidation toward nitrate and slower deposition of total inorganic nitrate, causing high secondary PM2.5 levels.
2025