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Assessing the impacts of citizen-led policies on emissions, air quality and health
Air pollution is a global challenge, and especially urban areas are particularly affected by acute episodes. Traditional approaches used to mitigate air pollution primarily consider the technical aspects of the problem but not the role of citizen behaviour and day-to-day practices. ClairCity, a Horizon 2020 funded project, created an impact assessment framework considering the role of citizen behaviour to create future scenarios, aiming to improve urban environments and the wellbeing and health of its inhabitants. This framework was applied to six pilot cases: Bristol, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Sosnowiec, Aveiro Region and Liguria Region, considering three-time horizons: 2025, 2035 and 2050. The scenarios approach includes the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario and a Final Unified Policy Scenarios (FUPS) established by citizens, decision-makers, local planners and stakeholders based on data collected through a citizen and stakeholder co-creation process. Therefore, this paper aims to present the ClairCity outcomes, analysing the quantified impacts of selected measures in terms of emissions, air quality, population exposure, and health. Each case study has established a particular set of measures with different levels of ambition, therefore different levels of success were achieved towards the control and mitigation of their specific air pollution problems. The transport sector was the most addressed by the measures showing substantial improvements for NO2, already with the BAU scenarios, and overall, even better results when applying the citizen-led FUPS scenarios. In some cases, due to a lack of ambition for the residential and commercial sector, the results were not sufficient to fulfil the WHO guidelines. Overall, it was found in all cities that the co-created scenarios would lead to environmental improvements in terms of air quality and citizens’ health compared to the baseline year of 2015. However, in some cases, the health impacts were lower than air quality due to the implementation of the measures not affecting the most densely populated areas. Benefits from the FUPS comparing to the BAU scenario were found to be highest in Amsterdam and Bristol, with further NO2 and PM10 emission reductions around 10%–16% by 2025 and 19%–28% by 2050, compared to BAU.
2021
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2021
Observational studies suggest that part of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) variability may be attributed to the spectral ultra-violet (UV) irradiance variations associated to the 11-year solar cycle. The observed maximum surface pressure response in the North Atlantic occurs 2–4 years after solar maximum, and some model studies have identified that atmosphere–ocean feedbacks explain the multi-year lag. Alternatively, medium-to-high energy electron (MEE) precipitation, which peaks in the declining phase of the solar cycle, has been suggested as a potential cause of this lag. We use a coupled (ocean–atmosphere) climate prediction model and a state-of-the-art MEE forcing to explore the respective roles of irradiance and MEE precipitation on the NAO variability. Three decadal ensemble experiments were conducted over solar cycle 23 in an idealized setting. We found a weak ensemble-mean positive NAO response to the irradiance. The simulated signal-to-noise ratio remained very small, indicating the predominance of internal NAO variability. The lack of multi-annual lag in the NAO response was likely due to lagged solar signals imprinted in temperatures below the oceanic mixed-layer re-emerging equatorward of the oceanic frontal zones, which anchor ocean–atmosphere feedbacks. While there is a clear, yet weak, signature from UV irradiance in the atmosphere and upper ocean over the North Atlantic, enhanced MEE precipitation on the other hand does not lead to any systematic changes in the stratospheric circulation, despite its marked chemical signatures.
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
Emissions of Tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and Hexafluoroethane (C2F6) From East Asia: 2008 to 2019
The perfluorocarbons (PFCs), tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and hexafluoroethane (C2F6), are potent greenhouse gases with very long atmospheric lifetimes. They are emitted almost entirely from industrial sources, including the aluminum and rare earth metal smelting industries that emit them as by-products, and the semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturing industries that use them and vent unutilized amounts to the atmosphere. Despite extensive industrial efforts to quantify and curb these emissions, “top-down” PFC emission estimates derived from atmospheric measurements continue to rise and are significantly greater than reported process- and inventory-based “bottom-up” emissions. In this study, we estimate emissions of CF4 and C2F6 from East Asia, where PFC emitting industries are heavily concentrated, using a top-down approach (a Bayesian inversion) with high-frequency atmospheric measurements at Gosan (Jeju Island, South Korea) for 2008–2019. We also compile and analyze the available bottom-up CF4 and C2F6 emissions in East Asia from industrial and government reports. Our results suggest that the observed increases in global PFC emissions since 2015 are driven primarily by China's aluminum industry, with significant contributions from Japan's and Korea's semiconductor industry. Our analysis suggests that Chinese emissions occur predominantly from the aluminum industry, although their emissions per production ratio may be improving. Our results for Japan and Korea find significant discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up emissions estimates, suggesting that the effectiveness of emission reduction systems (abatement) used in their semiconductor industries may be overestimated. Overall, our top-down results for East Asia contribute significantly to reducing the gap in the global PFC emission budgets.
2021
Moving forward in microplastic research: A Norwegian perspective
Given the increasing attention on the occurrence of microplastics in the environment, and the potential envi-ronmental threats they pose, there is a need for researchers to move quickly from basic understanding to applied science that supports decision makers in finding feasible mitigation measures and solutions. At the same time, they must provide sufficient, accurate and clear information to the media, public and other relevant groups (e.g., NGOs). Key requirements include systematic and coordinated research efforts to enable evidence-based decision making and to develop efficient policy measures on all scales (national, regional and global). To achieve this, collaboration between key actors is essential and should include researchers from multiple disciplines, policy-makers, authorities, civil and industry organizations, and the public. This further requires clear and informative communication processes, and open and continuous dialogues between all actors. Cross-discipline dialogues between researchers should focus on scientific quality and harmonization, defining and accurately communi-cating the state of knowledge, and prioritization of topics that are critical for both research and policy, with the common goal to establish and update action plans for holistic benefit. In Norway, cross-sectoral collaboration has been fundamental in supporting the national strategy to address plastic pollution. Researchers, stakeholders and the environmental authorities have come together to exchange knowledge, identify knowledge gaps, and set targeted and feasible measures to tackle one of the most challenging aspects of plastic pollution: microplastic. In this article, we present a Norwegian perspective on the state of knowledge on microplastic research efforts. Norway’s involvement in international efforts to combat plastic pollution aims at serving as an example of how key actors can collaborate synergistically to share knowledge, address shortcomings, and outline ways forward to address environmental challenges.
2021
The Community Inversion Framework v1.0: a unified system for atmospheric inversion studies
Atmospheric inversion approaches are expected to play a critical role in future observation-based monitoring systems for surface fluxes of greenhouse gases (GHGs), pollutants and other trace gases. In the past decade, the research community has developed various inversion software, mainly using variational or ensemble Bayesian optimization methods, with various assumptions on uncertainty structures and prior information and with various atmospheric chemistry–transport models. Each of them can assimilate some or all of the available observation streams for its domain area of interest: flask samples, in situ measurements or satellite observations. Although referenced in peer-reviewed publications and usually accessible across the research community, most systems are not at the level of transparency, flexibility and accessibility needed to provide the scientific community and policy makers with a comprehensive and robust view of the uncertainties associated with the inverse estimation of GHG and reactive species fluxes. Furthermore, their development, usually carried out by individual research institutes, may in the future not keep pace with the increasing scientific needs and technical possibilities. We present here the Community Inversion Framework (CIF) to help rationalize development efforts and leverage the strengths of individual inversion systems into a comprehensive framework. The CIF is primarily a programming protocol to allow various inversion bricks to be exchanged among researchers. In practice, the ensemble of bricks makes a flexible, transparent and open-source Python-based tool to estimate the fluxes of various GHGs and reactive species both at the global and regional scales. It will allow for running different atmospheric transport models, different observation streams and different data assimilation approaches. This adaptability will allow for a comprehensive assessment of uncertainty in a fully consistent framework. We present here the main structure and functionalities of the system, and we demonstrate how it operates in a simple academic case.
2021
Urban herring gulls (Larus argentatus) are exposed to contaminants from aquatic, terrestrial and anthropogenic sources. We aim to assess if differences in urbanisation affect ecological niche and contaminant concentrations in female herring gulls. Furthermore, we investigated maternal transfer from mothers to eggs for all the target compounds, including chlorinated paraffins (CPs) and cyclic volatile methyl siloxane (cVMSs), which to our knowledge have not been assessed in herring gulls previously. We compare concentrations of legacy and emerging contaminants and metals in blood and eggs between two herring gull colonies located 51 km apart, in the urban influenced Norwegian Oslofjord. While both colonies are within an urbanised area, the inner fjord is more so, as it is surrounded by Oslo, the capital and largest city in Norway Stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen indicated a more marine ecological niche in the outer than the inner fjord colony, although with overlap. Persistent organic pollutant (POP) concentrations were similar in the inner and outer fjord colonies, while the short-chained chlorinated paraffins (SCCP), which are recently added to the Stockholm convention and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) varied, with higher concentrations of SCCP and the cVMS decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5) in females and eggs of the inner fjord colony. Per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) concentrations were higher in the outer fjord colony, likely linked to releases from a point-source (airport and waste management facility with open access to food waste). In blood, chlorinated paraffins contributed most the total lipophilic contaminants (inner: 78%, outer: 56%), while polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were the most abundant lipophilic contaminants in eggs (inner: 62%, outer: 46%). Dechloranes and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) were detected in few samples. Maternal transfer, assessed by egg to blood ratios, of cVMSs were similar to the POPs with mean log ratio 0.39 (D5), while it was lower for SCCPs, with log ratios-0.77. Our results indicate comparable POP exposure of the herring gulls in the inner and outer Oslofjord, likely due to overlap in ecological niches between the colonies and wide distribution of POPs. The differences between the colonies in concentrations of PFAS, cVMS and CPs shows that point source exposures and urban influence may be more important than ecological niche for these compounds.
2021
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