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Journal articleMarkonis Y, Vargas Godoy MR, Pradhan RK, et al., 2024,
Spatial partitioning of terrestrial precipitation reveals varying dataset agreement across different environments
, Communications Earth and Environment, Vol: 5The study of the water cycle at planetary scale is crucial for our understanding of large-scale climatic processes. However, very little is known about how terrestrial precipitation is distributed across different environments. In this study, we address this gap by employing a 17-dataset ensemble to provide, for the first time, precipitation estimates over a suite of land cover types, biomes, elevation zones, and precipitation intensity classes. We estimate annual terrestrial precipitation at approximately 114,000 ± 9400 km3, with about 70% falling over tropical, subtropical and temperate regions. Our results highlight substantial inconsistencies, mainly, over the arid and the mountainous areas. To quantify the overall discrepancies, we utilize the concept of dataset agreement and then explore the pairwise relationships among the datasets in terms of “genealogy”, concurrency, and distance. The resulting uncertainty-based partitioning demonstrates how precipitation is distributed over a wide range of environments and improves our understanding on how their conditions influence observational fidelity.
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Journal articleDesouza C, Marsh D, Beevers S, et al., 2024,
Emissions from the construction sector in the United Kingdom
, Emission Control Science and Technology, Vol: 10, Pages: 70-80, ISSN: 2199-3637The UK national atmospheric emissions inventory estimates of construction industry emissions use a top-down approach, based on fuel consumption and employment. It estimates that the sector is the 2nd largest emitter of PM2.5 (14%) and 4th largest emitter of NOX (7%). In this study, we have adopted a bottom-up approach to assess emissions of NOX from the sector and show that emissions are 39% higher than the existing estimates. By developing a novel fleet turnover model to predict the population and emission standard of construction machinery up to 2025, we demonstrate a significant shift in the quantity and types of machines used. The overall uncertainty of the model was calculated to be 55%. Applying the estimated uncertainties to the model, in 2018, the non-road mobile machinery fleet in the UK emitted 36.6 ± 10.0 kilo-tonnes of NOX, whilst the NAEI estimated 33.2 kilo-tonnes for the same sector. For the subsequent years 2019 and 2020, the NAEI estimate was within the model’s uncertainty prediction—28.0 kilo-tonnes compared with 32.7 ± 8.9 kilo-tonnes for 2019 and 23.2 kilo-tonnes compared with 29.5 ± 8.1 kilo-tonnes for 2020. Overall, the size of the non-road mobile machinery fleet in the UK is predicted to reduce by 4% in 2025 compared to 2018. Furthermore, the introduction of Stages IV and V emission regulations for new machines will lead to a 58% reduction in fleet NOX emissions over the same period. These emission regulations are targeted at the larger, more polluting machines, with smaller machines not required to meet tighter emissions standards under Stage V. As a result, mini-excavators are the most common machines and consequently become the dominant source of NOX emissions from the fleet, contributing 55% in 2025. Therefore, tighter emissions regulations, or the uptake of battery power in the form of electrification, for these small machines would yield significant emissions redu
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Journal articleNagel G, Chen J, Jaensch A, et al., 2024,
Long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of gastric and the upper aerodigestive tract cancers in a pooled European cohort: the ELAPSE project
, International Journal of Cancer, Vol: 154, Pages: 1900-1910, ISSN: 0020-7136Air pollution has been shown to significantly impact human health including cancer. Gastric and upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancers are common and increased risk has been associated with smoking and occupational exposures. However, the association with air pollution remains unclear. We pooled European subcohorts (N = 287,576 participants for gastric and N = 297,406 for UADT analyses) and investigated the association between residential exposure to fine particles (PM2.5 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO2 ), black carbon (BC) and ozone in the warm season (O3w ) with gastric and UADT cancer. We applied Cox proportional hazards models adjusting for potential confounders at the individual and area-level. During 5,305,133 and 5,434,843 person-years, 872 gastric and 1139 UADT incident cancer cases were observed, respectively. For gastric cancer, we found no association with PM2.5 , NO2 and BC while for UADT the hazard ratios (95% confidence interval) were 1.15 (95% CI: 1.00-1.33) per 5 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 , 1.19 (1.08-1.30) per 10 μg/m3 increase in NO2 , 1.14 (1.04-1.26) per 0.5 × 10-5 m-1 increase in BC and 0.81 (0.72-0.92) per 10 μg/m3 increase in O3w . We found no association between long-term ambient air pollution exposure and incidence of gastric cancer, while for long-term exposure to PM2.5 , NO2 and BC increased incidence of UADT cancer was observed.
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Journal articleFuselier SA, Petrinec SM, Reiff PH, et al., 2024,
Global-scale processes and effects of magnetic reconnection on the geospace environment
, Space Science Reviews, Vol: 220, ISSN: 0038-6308Recent multi-point measurements, in particular from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS)spacecraft, have advanced the understanding of micro-scale aspects of magnetic reconnection. In addition, the MMS mission, as part of the Heliospheric System Observatory, combined with recent advances in global magnetospheric modeling, have furthered the understanding of meso- and global-scale structure and consequences of reconnection. Magneticreconnection at the dayside magnetopause and in the magnetotail are the drivers of the globalDungey cycle, a classical picture of global magnetospheric circulation. Some recent advances in the global structure and consequences of reconnection that are addressed hereinclude a detailed understanding of the location and steadiness of reconnection at the dayside magnetopause, the importance of multiple plasma sources in the global circulation, andreconnection consequences in the magnetotail. These advances notwithstanding, there areimportant questions about global reconnection that remain. These questions focus on howmultiple reconnection and reconnection variability fit into and complicate the Dungey Cyclepicture of global magnetospheric circulation.
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Journal articleVicco A, McCormack C, Pedrique B, et al., 2024,
A scoping literature review of global dengue age-stratified seroprevalence data: estimating dengue force of infection in endemic countries
, EBioMedicine, Vol: 104, ISSN: 2352-3964BackgroundDengue poses a significant burden worldwide, and a more comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneity in the intensity of dengue transmission within endemic countries is necessary to evaluate the potential impact of public health interventions.MethodsThis scoping literature review aimed to update a previous study of dengue transmission intensity by collating global age-stratified dengue seroprevalence data published in the Medline, Embase and Web of Science databases from 2014 to 2023. These data were then utilised to calibrate catalytic models and estimate the force of infection (FOI), which is the yearly per-capita risk of infection for a typical susceptible individual.FindingsWe found a total of 66 new publications containing 219 age-stratified seroprevalence datasets across 30 endemic countries. Together with the previously available average FOI estimates, there are now more than 250 dengue average FOI estimates obtained from seroprevalence studies from across the world.InterpretationThe results show large heterogeneities in average dengue FOI both across and within countries. These new estimates can be used to inform ongoing modelling efforts to improve our understanding of the drivers of the heterogeneity in dengue transmission globally, which in turn can help inform the optimal implementation of public health interventions.FundingUK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Community Jameel, Drugs for Neglected Disease initiative (DNDi) funded by the French Development Agency, Médecins Sans Frontières International; Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and UK aid.
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Journal articleMeis M, Pirani M, Euan C, et al., 2024,
Catalysing virtual collaboration: the experience of the remote TIES working groups
, Environmetrics, ISSN: 1099-095X -
OtherTippett A, Gryspeerdt E, Manshausen P, et al., 2024,
Supplementary material to "Weak liquid water path response in ship tracks"
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Journal articleGriffiths A, Lambelet M, Crocket K, et al., 2024,
Neodymium isotope composition and rare earth element distribution of East Antarctic continental shelf and deep waters
, Chemical Geology, Vol: 653, ISSN: 0009-2541Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) play key roles in the Earth's climate system. Both water masses form critical components of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and Meridional Overturning Circulation and therefore directly influence the large-scale redistribution of heat, nutrients and carbon. Reconstruction of past CDW transport and AABW production and export has been a key target in palaeoceanography. One promising proxy to achieve this has been the neodymium (Nd) isotope composition of seawater. The biogeochemical processes controlling Nd in the ocean, however, remain underconstrained, and modern observations of Nd isotopes in the Southern Ocean are still geographically limited.To overcome this limitation, 61 seawater samples were collected for Nd isotope and rare earth element (REE) analysis at nine stations along the Wilkes Land continental margin and in the Australian-Antarctic Basin (65°S 125°E) near East Antarctica. The results show that the different water masses have the following Nd isotope characteristics: Antarctic Surface Water (AASW), εNd = −9.0 ± 1.0 (2SD; n = 22); Modified CDW (MCDW), εNd = −8.8 ± 0.8 (2SD; n = 22); AABW, εNd = −8.3 ± 0.5 (2SD; n = 17).There is no evidence of continental REE inputs to surface waters on the Wilkes Land margin. Observed zonal variability of Nd isotope composition in AASW can be attributed to seasonal competition between the poleward flow of warm AASW from the AAG and the westward export of cold surface shelf waters by the Antarctic Slope Current.In terms of deep and bottom waters, mixing of upwelled CDW with AASW and AABW exclusively controls the Nd isotope composition of MCDW, with no indication of boundary processes modifying the Nd isotope composition of MCDW as it encroaches the shelf or slope. The regional Nd isotope signature for AABW is intermediate between published data for the Atlantic sector AABW (εNd
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Journal articleHan W, Zhang J, Xu Z, et al., 2024,
Could the association between ozone and arterial stiffness be modified by fish oil supplementation?
, Environmental Research, Vol: 249, ISSN: 0013-9351BACKGROUND: Arterial stiffness (AS) is an important predicting factor for cardiovascular disease. However, no epidemiological studies have ever explored the mediating role of biomarkers in the association between ozone and AS, nor weather fish oil modified such association. METHODS: Study participants were drawn from the UK biobank, and a total of 95,699 middle-aged and older adults were included in this study. Ozone was obtained from Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model matched to residential addresses, fish oil from self-reported intake, and arterial stiffness was based on device measurements. First, we applied a double robust approach to explore the association between ozone or fish oil intake and arterial stiffness, adjusting for potential confounders at the individual and regional levels. Then, how triglycerides, apolipoprotein B (Apo B)/apolipoprotein A (ApoA) and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (Non-HDL-C) mediate the relationship between ozone and AS. Last, the modifying role of fish oil was further explored by stratified analysis. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 55 years; annual average ozone exposure was associated with ASI (beta:0.189 [95%CI: 0.146 to 0.233], P < 0.001), and compared to participants who did not consume fish oil, fish oil users had a lower ASI (beta: 0.061 [95%CI: -0.111 to -0.010], P = 0.016). The relationship between ozone exposure and AS was mediated by triglycerides, ApoB/ApoA, and Non-HDL-C with mediation proportions ranging from 10.90% to 18.30%. Stratified analysis showed lower estimates on the ozone-AS relationship in fish oil users (P = 0.011). CONCLUSION: Ozone exposure was associated with higher levels of arterial stiffness, in contrast to fish oil consumption, which showed a protective association. The association between ozone exposure and arterial stiffness was partially mediated by some biomarkers. In the general population, fish oil consumption might provide prote
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Journal articleOpgenoorth HJ, Robinson R, Ngwira CM, et al., 2024,
Earth’s geomagnetic environment—progress and gaps in understanding, prediction, and impacts
, Advances in Space Research, ISSN: 0273-1177Understanding of Earth’s geomagnetic environment is critical to mitigating the space weather impacts caused by disruptive geoelectric fields in power lines and other conductors on Earth’s surface. These impacts are the result of a chain of processes driven by the solar wind and linking Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere and Earth’s surface. Tremendous progress has been made over the last two decades in understanding the solar wind driving mechanisms, the coupling mechanisms connecting the magnetically controlled regions of near-Earth space, and the impacts of these collective processes on human technologies on Earth’s surface. Studies of solar wind drivers have been focused on understanding the responses of the geomagnetic environment to spatial and temporal variations in the solar wind associated with Coronal Mass Ejections, Corotating Interaction Regions, Interplanetary Shocks, High-Speed Streams, and other interplanetary magnetic field structures. Increasingly sophisticated numerical models are able to simulate the magnetospheric response to the solar wind forcing associated with these structures. Magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling remains a great challenge, although new observations and sophisticated models that can assimilate disparate data sets have improved the ability to specify the electrodynamic properties of the high latitude ionosphere. The temporal and spatial resolution needed to predict the electric fields, conductivities, and currents in the ionosphere is driving the need for further advances. These parameters are intricately tied to auroral phenomena—energy deposition due to Joule heating and precipitating particles, motions of the auroral boundary, and ion outflow. A new view of these auroral processes is emerging that focuses on small-scale structures in the magnetosphere and their ionospheric effects, which may include the rapid variations in current associated with geomagnetically indu
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