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Fjernmåling av metanutslipp ved bruk av Sentinel-5P: en mulighetsstudie
Rapporten beskriver hvilke muligheter Sentinel-5P kan gi med tanke på å utvikle produkter for årlige nasjonale dekningskart med arealestimater med vekt på klimagassen metan.
NILU
2021
Overvåking av langtransporterte atmosfæriske miljøgifter i luft og nedbør, årsrapport 2020.
Denne rapporten inkluderer miljøovervåkningsdata fra 2020 og tidstrender for programmet Langtransporterte atmosfæriske miljøgifter. Resultatene omfatter 200 organiske miljøgifter (regulerte og ennå ikke regulerte), 11 tungmetaller og et utvalg organiske kjemikalier som potensielt er av bekymring for Arktisk miljø.
NILU
2021
Micronucleus assay applied to advanced in vitro lung models at ALI for nanotoxicity assessment
Elsevier
2021
The influence of probe spacing and probe bias in a double Langmuir probe setup
Multi-needle Langmuir probes are mounted on satellites and sounding rockets for high-frequency characterization of plasma in the ionosphere. Mounted on a spacecraft, the recorded probe current often differs from expected results. In this paper, we perform a numerical study using a particle in cell model to see how the spacing between the individual probes used in a multi-needle setup influences the measured current. We also study how the applied probe bias voltage can contribute to deviations. In our study, we use realistic electron temperatures and electron densities for the relevant part of the ionosphere. However, the results should be generally applicable and valid for other space environments as well as for laboratory Langmuir probe applications. From our study, we can see that when the distance is short, less than two Debye lengths, the current is highly affected, and we can see deviations of more than 60% compared to a single probe setup.
AIP Publishing (American Institute of Physics)
2021
Quantitative chemical analysis of airborne particulate matter (PM) is vital for the understanding of health effects in indoor and outdoor environments, as well as for enforcing EU air quality regulations. Typically, airborne particles are sampled over long time periods on filters, followed by lab-based analysis, e.g., with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). During the EURAMET EMPIR AEROMET project, cascade impactor aerosol sampling is combined for the first time with on-site total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) spectroscopy to develop a tool for quantifying particle element compositions within short time intervals and even on-site. This makes variations of aerosol chemistry observable with time resolution only a few hours and with good size resolution in the PM10 range. The study investigates the proof of principles of this methodological approach. Acrylic discs and silicon wafers are shown to be suitable impactor carriers with sufficiently smooth and clean surfaces, and a non-destructive elemental mass concentration measurement with a lower limit of detection around 10 pg/m3 could be achieved. We demonstrate the traceability of field TXRF measurements to a radiometrically calibrated TXRF reference, and the results from both analytical methods correspond satisfactorily.
MDPI
2021
Calibration of CO, NO2, and O3 Using Airify: A Low-Cost Sensor Cluster for Air Quality Monitoring
During the last decade, extensive research has been carried out on the subject of low-cost sensor platforms for air quality monitoring. A key aspect when deploying such systems is the quality of the measured data. Calibration is especially important to improve the data quality of low-cost air monitoring devices. The measured data quality must comply with regulations issued by national or international authorities in order to be used for regulatory purposes. This work discusses the challenges and methods suitable for calibrating a low-cost sensor platform developed by our group, Airify, that has a unit cost five times less expensive than the state-of-the-art solutions (approximately €1000). The evaluated platform can integrate a wide variety of sensors capable of measuring up to 12 parameters, including the regulatory pollutants defined in the European Directive. In this work, we developed new calibration models (multivariate linear regression and random forest) and evaluated their effectiveness in meeting the data quality objective (DQO) for the following parameters: carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The experimental results show that the proposed calibration managed an improvement of 12% for the CO and O3 gases and a similar accuracy for the NO2 gas compared to similar state-of-the-art studies. The evaluated parameters had different calibration accuracies due to the non-identical levels of gas concentration at which the sensors were exposed during the model’s training phase. After the calibration algorithms were applied to the evaluated platform, its performance met the DQO criteria despite the overall low price level of the platform.
MDPI
2021
2021
2021
Introducing a nested multimedia fate and transport model for organic contaminants (NEM)
Some organic contaminants, including the persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have achieved global distribution through long range atmospheric transport (LRAT). Regulatory efforts, monitoring programs and modelling studies address the LRAT of POPs on national, continental (e.g. Europe) and/or global scales. Whereas national and continental-scale models require estimates of the input of globally dispersed chemicals from outside of the model domain, existing global-scale models either have relatively coarse spatial resolution or are so computationally demanding that it limits their usefulness. Here we introduce the Nested Exposure Model (NEM), which is a multimedia fate and transport model that is global in scale yet can achieve high spatial resolution of a user-defined target region without huge computational demands. Evaluating NEM by comparing model predictions for PCB-153 in air with measurements at nine long-term monitoring sites of the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) reveals that nested simulations at a resolution of 1° × 1° yield results within a factor of 1.5 of observations at sites in northern Europe. At this resolution, the model attributes more than 90% of the atmospheric burden within any of the grid cells containing an EMEP site to advective atmospheric transport from elsewhere. Deteriorating model performance with decreasing resolution (15° × 15°, 5° × 5° and 1° × 1°), manifested by overestimation of concentrations across most of northern Europe by more than a factor of 3, illustrates the effect of numerical diffusion. Finally, we apply the model to demonstrate how the choice of spatial resolution affect predictions of atmospheric deposition to the Baltic Sea. While we envisage that NEM may be used for a wide range of applications in the future, further evaluation will be required to delineate the boundaries of applicability towards chemicals with divergent fate properties as well as in environmental media other than air.
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
2021
In this paper, the effect of the lockdown measures on nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in Europe is analysed by a statistical model approach based on a generalised additive model (GAM). The GAM is designed to find relationships between various meteorological parameters and temporal metrics (day of week, season, etc.) on the one hand and the level of pollutants on the other. The model is first trained on measurement data from almost 2000 monitoring stations during 2015–2019 and then applied to the same stations in 2020, providing predictions of expected concentrations in the absence of a lockdown. The difference between the modelled levels and the actual measurements from 2020 is used to calculate the impact of the lockdown measures adjusted for confounding effects, such as meteorology and temporal trends. The study is focused on April 2020, the month with the strongest reductions in NO2, as well as on the gradual recovery until the end of July. Significant differences between the countries are identified, with the largest NO2 reductions in Spain, France, Italy, Great Britain and Portugal and the smallest in eastern countries (Poland and Hungary). The model is found to perform best for urban and suburban sites. A comparison between the found relative changes in urban surface NO2 data during the lockdown and the corresponding changes in tropospheric vertical NO2 column density as observed by the TROPOMI instrument on Sentinel-5P revealed good agreement despite substantial differences in the observing method.
MDPI
2021
This study investigated concentrations of phthalates (diesters of phthalic acids) in blubber/adipose tissue of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus) sampled in the Svalbard Archipelago (extending westward in the case of bowhead whales). Additionally, total concentrations (free and conjugated forms) of eight phthalate monoester metabolites were analysed in plasma of polar bears. Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) was the only phthalate quantified among the 12 phthalates investigated. This compound was present in 6/7 fin whale samples, 4/7 blue whale samples, 2/5 bowhead whale samples and 1/12 polar bear samples. DEHP concentrations ranged from <20–398 ng/g wet weight. Phthalate metabolites, mono-n-butyl phthalate and monoisobutyl phthalate, were found in low concentrations (<1.2 ng/mL) in some of the polar bear samples. In vitro reporter gene assays were used to assess transcriptional activity of fin whale peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG), glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and the thyroid hormone receptor beta (THRB) by DEHP and diisononyl phthalate (DiNP). Due to the high degree of similarity of the ligand binding domain in the THRB and PPARG among whales, polar bears and humans, the transactivation results also apply for these species. DEHP showed both agonistic and antagonistic effects towards whale THRB at considerably higher concentrations than measured in the study animals; DiNP was a weak agonist of whale THRB. No significant agonistic or antagonistic effects were detected for DEHP or DiNP for whale PPARG, whereas DEHP and DiNP decreased basal luciferase activity mediated by whale GR at several test concentrations. In conclusion, DEHP was detected in the blubber of marine mammals from the Norwegian Arctic and it appears to have potential to modulate the transcriptional activity of whale THRB, but current DEHP concentrations do not modulate the function of the studied nuclear receptors in adipose tissue of blue whales, fin whales, bowhead whales or polar bears sampled from the Norwegian Arctic.
Elsevier
2021
2021
Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century
In recent years, the pan-Arctic region has experienced increasingly extreme fire seasons. Fires in the northern high latitudes are driven by current and future climate change, lightning, fuel conditions, and human activity. In this context, conceptualizing and parameterizing current and future Arctic fire regimes will be important for fire and land management as well as understanding current and predicting future fire emissions. The objectives of this review were driven by policy questions identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group and posed to its Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers. This review synthesizes current understanding of the changing Arctic and boreal fire regimes, particularly as fire activity and its response to future climate change in the pan-Arctic have consequences for Arctic Council states aiming to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the north. The conclusions from our synthesis are the following. (1) Current and future Arctic fires, and the adjacent boreal region, are driven by natural (i.e. lightning) and human-caused ignition sources, including fires caused by timber and energy extraction, prescribed burning for landscape management, and tourism activities. Little is published in the scientific literature about cultural burning by Indigenous populations across the pan-Arctic, and questions remain on the source of ignitions above 70∘ N in Arctic Russia. (2) Climate change is expected to make Arctic fires more likely by increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, increased lightning activity, and drier vegetative and ground fuel conditions. (3) To some extent, shifting agricultural land use and forest transitions from forest–steppe to steppe, tundra to taiga, and coniferous to deciduous in a warmer climate may increase and decrease open biomass burning, depending on land use in addition to climate-driven biome shifts. However, at the country and landscape scales, these relationships are not well established. (4) Current black carbon and PM2.5 emissions from wildfires above 50 and 65∘ N are larger than emissions from the anthropogenic sectors of residential combustion, transportation, and flaring. Wildfire emissions have increased from 2010 to 2020, particularly above 60∘ N, with 56 % of black carbon emissions above 65∘ N in 2020 attributed to open biomass burning – indicating how extreme the 2020 wildfire season was and how severe future Arctic wildfire seasons can potentially be. (5) What works in the boreal zones to prevent and fight wildfires may not work in the Arctic. Fire management will need to adapt to a changing climate, economic development, the Indigenous and local communities, and fragile northern ecosystems, including permafrost and peatlands. (6) Factors contributing to the uncertainty of predicting and quantifying future Arctic fire regimes include underestimation of Arctic fires by satellite systems, lack of agreement between Earth observations and official statistics, and still needed refinements of location, conditions, and previous fire return intervals on peat and permafrost landscapes. This review highlights that much research is needed in order to understand the local and regional impacts of the changing Arctic fire regime on emissions and the global climate, ecosystems, and pan-Arctic communities.
2021
Seasonal to interannual variations in the concentrations of sulfur aerosols (< 2.5 µm in diameter; non sea-salt sulfate: NSS-SO2−4; anthropogenic sulfate: Anth-SO2−4; biogenic sulfate: Bio-SO2−4; methanesulfonic acid: MSA) in the Arctic atmosphere were investigated using measurements of the chemical composition of aerosols collected at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard (78.9∘ N, 11.9∘ E) from 2015 to 2019. In all measurement years the concentration of NSS-SO2−4 was highest during the pre-bloom period and rapidly decreased towards summer. During the pre-bloom period we found a strong correlation between NSS-SO2−4 (sum of Anth-SO2−4 and Bio-SO2−4) and Anth-SO2−4. This was because more than 50 % of the NSS-SO2−4 measured during this period was Anth-SO2−4, which originated in northern Europe and was subsequently transported to the Arctic in Arctic haze. Unexpected increases in the concentration of Bio-SO2−4 aerosols (an oxidation product of dimethylsulfide: DMS) were occasionally found during the pre-bloom period. These probably originated in regions to the south (the North Atlantic Ocean and the Norwegian Sea) rather than in ocean areas in the proximity of Ny-Ålesund. Another oxidation product of DMS is MSA, and the ratio of MSA to Bio-SO2−4 is extensively used to estimate the total amount of DMS-derived aerosol particles in remote marine environments. The concentration of MSA during the pre-bloom period remained low, primarily because of the greater loss of MSA relative to Bio-SO2−4 and the suppression of condensation of gaseous MSA onto particles already present in air masses being transported northwards from distant ocean source regions (existing particles). In addition, the low light intensity during the pre-bloom period resulted in a low concentration of photochemically activated oxidant species including OH radicals and BrO; these conditions favored the oxidation pathway of DMS to Bio-SO2−4 rather than to MSA, which acted to lower the MSA concentration at Ny-Ålesund. The concentration of MSA peaked in May or June and was positively correlated with phytoplankton biomass in the Greenland and Barents seas around Svalbard. As a result, the mean ratio of MSA to the DMS-derived aerosols was low (0.09 ± 0.07) in the pre-bloom period but high (0.32 ± 0.15) in the bloom and post-bloom periods. There was large interannual variability in the ratio of MSA to Bio-SO2−4 (i.e., 0.24 ± 0.11 in 2017, 0.40 ± 0.14 in 2018, and 0.36 ± 0.14 in 2019) during the bloom and post-bloom periods. This was probably associated with changes in the chemical properties of existing particles, biological activities surrounding the observation site, and air mass transport patterns. Our results indicate that MSA is not a conservative tracer for predicting DMS-derived particles, and the contribution of MSA to the growth of newly formed particles may be much larger during the bloom and post-bloom periods than during the pre-bloom period.
2021
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2021
Low-risk removal of embedded surface soiling on delicate heritage objects can require novel alternatives to traditional cleaning systems. Edvard Munch’s monumental Aula paintings (1911–16) have a long history of exposure to atmospheric pollution and cleaning campaigns that have compromised the appearance and the condition of these important artworks. Soiling removal from porous and water-sensitive, unvarnished oil paintings continues to be a major conservation challenge. This paper presents the approach and results of research into the effect and efficiency of three novel systems used for soiling removal: soft particle blasting, CO2-snow blasting, and Nanorestore Gel® Dry and Peggy series hydrogels. Cleaning tests were performed on accelerated-aged and artificially soiled mock-ups consisting of unvarnished oil paint and chalk-glue grounds. Visual and analytical assessment (magnification using a light microscope and scanning electron microscope, as well as colour- and gloss measurement) was carried out before and after mock-up cleaning tests and the results were compared to those obtained using the dry polyurethane sponges employed in the most recent Aula surface cleaning campaign (2009–11). Although the results varied, the Nanorestore Gel® series proved promising with respect to improved soiling removal efficiency, and reduced pigment loss for the water-sensitive surfaces evaluated, compared to dry sponges.
Springer
2021
The Arctic middle atmosphere was affected by major sudden stratospheric warmings (SSW) in February 2018 and January 2019, respectively. In this article, we report for the first time the impact of these two events on the middle atmospheric nitric oxide (NO) abundance. The study is based on measurements obtained during two dedicated observation campaigns, using the Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR) aboard the Odin satellite, measuring NO globally since 2003. The SSW of February 2018 was similar to other, more dynamically quiet, Arctic winters in term of NO downward transport from the upper mesosphere–lower thermosphere to lower altitudes (referred to as energetic particle precipitation indirect effect EPP-IE). On the contrary, the event of January 2019 led to one of the strongest EPP-IE cases observed within the Odin operational period. Important positive NO anomalies were indeed observed in the lower mesosphere–upper stratosphere during the three months following the SSW onset, corresponding to NO volume mixing ratios more than 50 times higher than the climatological values. These different consequences on the middle atmospheric composition are explained by very different dynamical characteristics of these two SSW events.
Elsevier
2021
2021