Fant 10000 publikasjoner. Viser side 397 av 400:
2025
Temporal changes in per and polyfluoroalkyl substances and their associations with type 2 diabetes
We assessed temporal changes of PFAS and associations with T2DM over a period of 30 years in a nested case–control study with repeated measurements. Logistic regression was used to assess associations between 11 PFAS and T2DM at five time-points in 116 cases and 139 controls (3 pre- and 2 post-diagnostic time-points in cases). Mixed linear models were applied to assess if changes in PFAS were related to T2DM status. In the pre-diagnostic time-point T3 (2001), future cases had higher concentrations of PFHpA, PFNA, PFHxS and PFHpS compared to controls. In the post-diagnostic time point T5 (2015/16), PFNA and PFOS were higher in prevalent cases. PFHxS and PFHpS were positively associated with future T2DM at the pre-diagnostic time-point T3, whereas PFTrDA were inversely associated with future T2DM at T1 (1986/87) and prevalent T2DM at T4 (2007/8). Temporal changes in PFAS across the study period showed that cases experienced a greater increase in pre-diagnostic concentrations of PFHpA, PFTrDA, PFHxS and PFOSA, as well as a larger post-diagnostic decrease in PFOSA, compared to controls. This study is the first to show that temporal changes in PFAS are associated with T2DM status for certain PFAS, and associations between PFAS and T2DM vary according to sample year.
2025
Machine learning for mapping glacier surface facies in Svalbard
Glaciers are dynamic and highly sensitive indicators of climate change, necessitating frequent and precise monitoring. As Earth observation technology evolves with advanced sensors and mapping methods, the need for accurate and efficient approaches to monitor glacier changes becomes increasingly important. Glacier Surface Facies (GSF), formed through snow accumulation and ablation, serve as valuable indicators of glacial health. Mapping GSF provides insights into a glacier's annual adaptations. However, satellite-based GSF mapping presents significant challenges in terms of data preprocessing and algorithm selection for accurate feature extraction. This study presents an experiment using very high-resolution (VHR) WorldView-3 satellite data to map GSF on the Midtre Lovénbreen glacier in Svalbard. We applied three machine learning (ML) algorithms—Random Forest (RF), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM)—to explore the impact of different image preprocessing techniques, including atmospheric corrections, pan sharpening methods, and spectral band combinations. Our results demonstrate that RF outperformed both ANN and SVM, achieving an overall accuracy of 85.02 %. However, nuanced variations were found for specific processing conditions and can be explored for specific applications. This study represents the first clear delineation of ML algorithm performance for GSF mapping under varying preprocessing conditions. The data and findings from this experiment will inform future ML-based studies aimed at understanding glaciological adaptations in a rapidly changing cryosphere, with potential applications in long-term spatiotemporal monitoring of glacier health.
2025
Støvnedfall Miljøbriketter AS. Måling av nedfallsstøv og mangan
NILU har gjort målinger av nedfallsstøv rundt Miljøbriketter AS sitt anlegg i Skien. Det ble gjort prøvetaking ved 8 målepunkter i to perioder. Prøvene ble analysert for mengde nedfallsstøv og mangan. Bidraget fra Miljøbriketter til total mengde nedfallsstøv er lite.
NILU
2025
Monitoring of greenhouse gases and aerosols at Svalbard and Birkenes in 2024. Annual report
This annual report for 2024 summarizes the activities and results of the greenhouse gas monitoring at the Zeppelin Observatory, situated on Svalbard, during the period 2001-2024, and the greenhouse gas monitoring and aerosol observations from Birkenes for 2009-2024.
NILU
2025
2025
2025
2025
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) accumulate high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which have been linked to immunomodulation. Over the past decades, large-scale mortality events associated with cetacean morbillivirus (CeMV) have affected cetacean populations, and concerns have been raised about the role of contaminants in exacerbating these outbreaks. However, establishing cause-effect relationships in free-roaming cetaceans remains a significant challenge. In vitro approaches present unique potential for furthering our understanding of the effects of multiple environmental stressors in marine mammal health. In this study, we used primary fibroblasts cultured from wild Norwegian killer whale skin biopsies (n = 6) to assess how exposure to POP mixtures affects cell viability and CeMV replication. Our findings demonstrate that CeMV successfully replicates in killer whale fibroblasts, with the viral replication significantly increasing over the duration of the experiment. POP exposure led to a concentration-dependent decrease in cell viability and a significant increase in viral replication. These results validate killer whale primary fibroblasts as a valuable in vitro tool for the study of co-exposure of POPs and morbillivirus on toothed cetaceans. Moreover, these findings support the need for further research to confirm the role of contaminants in intensifying the severity of CeMV infections in the wild.
2025
2025
Rethinking Global Soil Degradation: Drivers, Impacts, and Solutions
The increasing threat of soil degradation presents significant challenges to soil health, especially within agroecosystems that are vital for food security, climate regulation, and economic stability. This growing concern arises from intricate interactions between land use practices and climatic conditions, which, if not addressed, could jeopardize sustainable development and environmental resilience. This review offers a comprehensive examination of soil degradation, including its definitions, global prevalence, underlying mechanisms, and methods of measurement. It underscores the connections between soil degradation and land use, with a focus on socio‐economic consequences. Current assessment methods frequently depend on insufficient data, concentrate on singular factors, and utilize arbitrary thresholds, potentially resulting in misclassification and misguided decisions. We analyze these shortcomings and investigate emerging methodologies that provide scalable and objective evaluations, offering a more accurate representation of soil vulnerability. Additionally, the review assesses both physical and biological indicators, as well as the potential of technologies such as remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics for enhanced monitoring and forecasting. Key factors driving soil degradation, including unsustainable agricultural practices, deforestation, industrial activities, and extreme climate events, are thoroughly examined. The review emphasizes the importance of healthy soils in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly concerning food and water security, ecosystem health, poverty alleviation, and climate action. It suggests future research directions that prioritize standardized metrics, interdisciplinary collaboration, and predictive modeling to facilitate more integrated and effective management of soil degradation in the context of global environmental changes.
2025
2025
State of the Climate in 2024: The Arctic
The Arctic environment in 2024 continued on a trajectory that has put it in a state far different from that of the twentieth century. Ongoing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to quickly warm the Arctic, resulting in rapid changes in the cryosphere that are driving cascading impacts to climate, ecological, and societal systems.
Many weather- and climate-related impacts in the Arctic are the result of compounding change, such as increased riverbank erosion, which is proximately due to increased river discharge from higher seasonal precipitation, yet is also exacerbated by thawing permafrost. However, even individual storms occur within very different ocean and ice conditions than were typically present in the late twentieth century. As a result, the impacts, including high winds, excessive precipitation, and coastal inundation, may be quite different nowadays, as exemplified by the October 2024 storm in northwest Alaska that produced severe coastal flooding in several communities. To share some of these impacts with a wider audience, select extreme weather impacts around the greater Arctic have been highlighted through the inclusion of sidebars in recent State of the Climate Arctic chapters (e.g., Benestad et al. 2023; Thoman et al. 2024).
Average surface air temperatures for the Arctic overall (poleward of 60°N) for 2024 averaged 1.27°C above the 1991–2020 baseline average, the second-highest annual temperature since records began in 1900. For the 11th consecutive year, the Arctic annual temperature anomaly was larger than the global average anomaly. Seasonally, summer (July–September) 2024 ranked as the third-highest average temperature, and autumn (October–December) 2024 saw its highest average temperature on record. At the subseasonal scale, an intense August heatwave brought all-time record high temperatures to parts of the northwest North American Arctic. Closely but not completely tied to spring and summer air temperature trends, productivity of tundra and boreal forest vegetation has dramatically increased in recent decades. Overall “tundra greenness” was the fifth highest since 1982. However, local to regional “browning” (reduced vegetation productivity) shows that disturbance factors besides temperatures, such as wildfire, can be important.
Sea ice is one of the most iconic features of the Arctic environment and plays an important role in regulating global climate, regional ecosystems, and economic activities. Sea ice extent typically reaches the annual maximum in March, and in 2024 the maximum was near the 1991–2020 average overall, but somewhat below average in the Barents Sea and Gulf of St. Lawrence. The annual minimum sea ice extent occurs in September, and in 2024 the September monthly average was the sixth lowest in the 46-year satellite record. The Northern Sea Route along the north Russia coast opened later than the past 20 years’ average due to persistent ice in the southwest Chukchi Sea. The Northwest Passage’s southern route through northwest Canada opened again this year and, quite unusually, the deepwater northern route was also almost entirely ice free at the end of September.
Decreasing sea ice extent during the late spring and summer months exposes larger areas of ocean to direct warming during the time of year of high incoming solar radiation. Poleward of 65°N, open ocean surface temperatures typically peak in August. In 2024, late summer sea surface temperature anomalies showed significant regional variability, with the waters in the Barents and Kara Seas 2°C–4°C warmer than normal. In sharp regional contrast, Chukchi Sea sea surface temperatures were the lowest in more than 40 years, while just to the east, sea surface temperatures in the southern Beaufort Sea were significantly above the 1991–2020 average.
Like sea ice, permafrost (soils or other earth materials that have remained frozen for at least two years) is an important feature of Arctic environments that occurs widely on land and throughout some submarine continental shelf areas that were exposed land during the last Ice Age (about 15,000 years ago). Unlike many parts of the Arctic environmental system, permafrost temperatures and the summer surface thaw zone cannot be monitored from space-borne instruments and depend on in situ measurements. While long-term observations are not available over most of the Asian Arctic, observations elsewhere show multi-decade warming of deeper permafrost continuing across the Arctic, with some sites in North America and Svalbard having seen their highest temperatures on record in 2024. Overall, colder permafrost is warming more rapidly; areas where permafrost temperatures are close to freezing have slower rates of warming as ice changes phase to liquid water.
Precipitation monitoring in the Arctic has historically been limited due to the lack of in situ measurements over the Arctic Ocean, a sparse land station network, and significant problems with solid precipitation undercatch because of the inherent difficulties in capturing solid precipitation in strong wind environments. Recent advances in reanalyses that combine observations and computer simulations now allow for more robust regional-scale precipitation analysis and historical comparisons. In 2024, Arctic-wide annual precipitation was the third highest on record, and summer (July through September) precipitation was the highest since 1950. Rivers serve as regional integrators of precipitation. Arctic river discharge overall for both 2023 and 2024 was close to the 1991–2020 average, albeit with significant differences across basins. For example, in North America, Mackenzie River discharge was well below average in both years, but Yukon River discharge was above average in both years; most basins in Eurasia saw above-normal discharge in 2024 but below-average discharge in 2023.
In much of the Arctic, snow is the dominant form of precipitation for most of the year, and the presence or absence of snow cover is a critical factor in many climate and environmental processes. During the 2023/24 snow season, there were marked regional and continental scale differences in snow cover duration. The snow cover duration varied from the shortest to date in the twenty-first century over parts of Canada to at or near the longest in this century in parts of the Nordic and Asian Arctic.
Melt and discharge from the Greenland Ice Sheet play important roles in modulating North Atlantic weather and climate. In 2024, the total amount of ice decreased, as it has every year since the late 1990s, but the loss was 50%−80% less than the 2002 − 23 annual average. This was the result of an unusual but persistent weather pattern that inhibited the development and persistence of warm air masses over Greenland during the summer. Ongoing monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which holds enough water to raise global sea levels by more than seven meters if entirely melted, is critical for understanding drivers of melt and ice sheet dynamics.
The Arctic stratosphere experienced two major sudden warming events early in 2024 that resulted in enhanced ozone transport into the region from lower latitudes. As a result, surface ultraviolet radiation was reduced in parts of the Asian Arctic in spring and the central Arctic and North America in summer.
Special Notes: The 1991–2020 baseline is used in this chapter except where data availability requires use of a different baseline. This chapter includes a focus on Arctic river discharge (section 5h), which alternates yearly with a section on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland.
2025
2025
Measurements from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) combined with a global 12-box model of the atmosphere have long been used to estimate global emissions and surface mean mole fraction trends of atmospheric trace gases. Here, we present annually updated estimates of these global emissions and mole fraction trends for 42 compounds through 2023 measured by the AGAGE network, including chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, nitrogen trifluoride, methane, nitrous oxide, and selected other compounds. The data sets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15372480 (Western et al., 2025). We describe the methodology to derive global mole fraction and emissions trends, which includes the calculation of semihemispheric monthly mean mole fractions, the mechanics of the 12-box model and the inverse method that is used to estimate emissions from the observations and model. Finally, we present examples of the emissions and mole fraction data sets for the 42 compounds.
2025
Kartlegging av utslipp fra aktiviteter i Oslo Havn
Stiftelsen NILU har utarbeidet en utslippsberegning for aktiviteter på land ved Oslo Havn. Arbeidet omfatter innhenting av aktivitetsdata og utslippsfaktorer fra relevante kilder. Utslippet er beregnet for Dagens situasjon 2023 og framskrevet til 2030 og 2040. For 2040 er det også regnet på effekten av å bytte til bio-basert brensel i fabrikkene.
NILU
2025
Abstract. Establishing interlaboratory compatibility among measurements of stable isotope ratios of atmospheric methane (δ13C-CH4 and δD-CH4) is challenging. Significant offsets are common because laboratories have different ties to the VPDB or SMOW-SLAP scales. Umezawa et al. (2018) surveyed numerous comparison efforts for CH4 isotope measurements conducted from 2003 to 2017 and found scale offsets of up to 0.5 ‰ for δ13C-CH4 and 13 ‰ for δD-CH4 between laboratories. This exceeds the World Meteorological Organisation Global Atmospheric Watch (WMO-GAW) network compatibility targets of 0.02 ‰ and 1 ‰ considerably. We employ a method to establish scale offsets between laboratories using their reported CH4 isotope measurements on atmospheric samples. Our study includes data from eight laboratories with experience in high-precision isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) measurements for atmospheric CH4. The analysis relies exclusively on routine atmospheric measurements conducted by these laboratories at high-latitude stations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, where we assume each measurement represents sufficiently well-mixed air at the latitude for direct comparison. We use two methodologies for interlaboratory comparisons: (I) assessing differences between time-adjacent observation data and (II) smoothing the observed data using polynomial and harmonic functions before comparison. The results of both methods are consistent, and with a few exceptions, the overall average offsets between laboratories align well with those reported by Umezawa et al. (2018). This indicates that interlaboratory offsets remain robust over multi-year periods. The evaluation of routine measurements allows us to calculate the interlaboratory offsets from hundreds, in some cases thousands of measurements. Therefore, the uncertainty in the mean interlaboratory offset is not limited by the analytical error of a single analysis but by real atmospheric variability between the sampling dates and stations. Using the same method, we assess this uncertainty by investigating measurements from four high-latitude sites analysed by the INSTAAR laboratory. After applying the derived interlaboratory offsets, we present a harmonised time series for δ13C-CH4 and δD-CH4 at high northern and southern latitudes, covering the period from 1988 to 2023.
2025
PikMe: a flexible prioritization tool for chemicals of emerging concern
Identifying new contaminants of emerging concern remains a complex task due to the sheer number of chemical substances potentially released into the environment, the scattered sources of information, and often the lack of adequate data. Environmental screening and monitoring programs are designed to map the presence, sources, and potential environmental impacts of contaminants, yet prioritizing which chemicals to include in such efforts remains resource-intensive and technically challenging. PikMe is a modular, open-access prioritization tool that integrates information from major data bases and evaluates the concern and reliability of the data for more than one million substances. PikMe is built in a modular way so that prioritization can be done based on specific chemical properties relevant to a given scenario (i.e., drinking water contaminants or bioaccumulation in biota) rather than assigning only a global risk score. PikMe scores substances based on persistence, bioaccumulation, mobility, environmental toxicity, and human toxicity, assigning individual score per property. Additionally, PikMe is designed for flexibility by allowing the integration of external lists of chemicals and supporting optional add-ons. Different scenarios of use are described in this article, including the selection of chemicals for environmental monitoring and screening in Norway and the assessment of the implications of the new classifications according to the regulation for classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures on persistent chemicals.
2025
Etablering av vindkraftverk på land kan medføre en risiko for drikkevann når installasjonene ligger i eller nær vanntilsigsområder til drikkevannskilder. Denne rapporten, utarbeidet av VKM på oppdrag fra Mattilsynet, gir Mattilsynet et kunnskapsbasert grunnlag for å stille krav til konsekvensutredninger og detaljplan for å beskytte drikkevannet.
Rapporten identifiserer potensielle farer for kjemisk og fysisk forurensning av drikkevann gjennom hele livsløpet til et vindkraftverk – fra planlegging og anleggsfase, til drift og avvikling. Den beskriver relevante lover og forskrifter, sentrale aktører og deres roller, og legger vekt på når og hvordan Mattilsynet kan involveres og komme med innspill i den kommunale planprosessen etter plan- og bygningsloven og i konsesjonsprosessen etter energiloven som forvaltes av NVE. Det er av stor betydning at Mattilsynet varsles og involveres tidlig i prosessen. Tiltakshaver må sørge for at risiko for forurensning av drikkevann og vanntilsigsområde utredes på en etterprøvbar måte, slik at Mattilsynet kan gi tydelige innspill til utredningen for å sikre at drikkevannshensyn er ivaretatt.
2025
2025