Environment

Dangerous N2O emissions have been underestimated, says new report

A new study finds that agriculture is releasing more nitrous oxide into the atmosphere than previously thought
A new study finds that agriculture is releasing more nitrous oxide into the atmosphere than previously thought

Carbon dioxide is the main villain in most coverage of climate change, but it’s not working alone – other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide (N2O) also pose problems. Now, a new study has found that we’re releasing more N2O into the atmosphere than we thought, which may weaken our already-strained efforts to combat climate change.

Like CO2 and methane, N2O emissions are strongly linked to human industrial activity, and agriculture in particular. Plants need nitrogen in the soil to grow, so fertilizers rich in the stuff have been used widely in the past few decades. But as a by-product, the plants release nitrous oxide into the air around them.

“The increased nitrogen availability has made it possible to produce a lot more food,” says Rona Thompson, lead scientist on the study. “The downside is of course the environmental problems associated with it, such as rising N2O levels in the atmosphere.”

And once it’s in the atmosphere, N2O can be very harmful. It’s far more potent than CO2 – almost 300 times more damaging, in fact – and can deplete the ozone layer. Along with farming, N2O is also released from the oceans, and the levels of those emissions is due to rise as the seas become more acidic.

With all this in mind, it’s important to get an accurate understanding of N2O emissions, and this was the goal of the new study, by researchers from the NILU–Norwegian Institute for Air Research and the University of Maryland.

The team found that atmospheric levels of nitrous oxide have risen steadily since the middle of the 20th century, and this rate has accelerated since 2009. The largest contributions to the global increase were made by China, India and Brazil.

This means that there’s much more N2O in the atmosphere than previously estimated. The team calculated that between 2000 and 2005, and 2010 and 2015, N2O accounted for about 10 percent of the global total of greenhouse gas emissions.

Worryingly, that’s twice the amount that was reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This data is then used for reports like those from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – meaning the already dire outlooks of these reports haven’t taken into account the extra N2O.

The team puts forward a possible explanation for the discrepancy. Because the amount of nitrogen in the soil is steadily going up, a certain amount of nitrogen fertilizer will release more N2O into the air than it used to. This changing relationship hasn’t been accounted for in the past – instead, organizations like the IPCC assume a constant emission factor.

It’s not all bad news though: the researchers say that the problem can be solved, although it will require a global effort.

“In Europe and North America, we have succeeded in decreasing growth in nitrous oxide emissions, an important contributor to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion,” says Eric Davidson, co-author of the study. “Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Asia and South America, where fertilizer use, intensification of livestock production, and the resulting nitrous oxide emissions are growing rapidly.”

The research was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Source: University of Maryland, Scimex

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7 comments
Pmeon
What about water vapour, that is a greenhouse gas and it has a concentration that is over 400 times higher than the highest CO2 level ever measured.
Need proof. What happens when you have a cloudy overcast night? It's warmer, clear night it's colder. Cloud comes overhead during the day, feels cooler, bright sun no clouds = warmer. That is real instant climate change and that's bad right?
Catweazle
A couple of simple observations are sufficient to debunk the CO2-produced AGW hoax.
Take two locations in the Equatorial region, one in – say – the Sahara Desert and one in the Amazon rain forest.
The atmospheric CO2 concentrations between the two will vary only slightly but there will be a very considerable difference in the atmospheric water vapour, so if the CO2 concentration is the primary driver of heat retention in the atmosphere there should be little or no variation between the day time and night time temperatures in the two locations.
So now let us examine the diurnal temperature variation – day time versus night time – between the two different locations:
For the desert, NASA gives a variation of an average of 38°C (day), average of -3.9°C (night), giving a diurnal range of ~42°C.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/experiments/biome/biodesert.php
For the rainforest, from the site:
https://courses.botany.wisc.edu/botany_422/Lecture/Lect05TropRain.html we find: “Diurnal patterns! (not seasonal); up to 2.8 C daily temperature range (sometimes greater than seasonal change!)”
Other estimates from other sources of the respective temperatures agree almost exactly with the above, so it is very clear indeed that compared to water vapour the effect of atmospheric CO2 on the temperature of the surface temperature of the planet is negligible.
paul314
Wow, the trolls really do work hard. Their descendants, if they have any, will curse their names.
Sambo
More alarmist nonsense.
bwana4swahili
N2O has been a problem since the '60's and was the worst culprit in Los Angeles smog, i.e.: the eye watering yellow cap over the city. Nothing new with this finding and 400x worse than CO2! I think the nonsense about CO2 causing climate change is just that; nonsense!!
Douglas Rogers
With no water vapor the global mean temperature would be around freezing. This essentially constitutes an ice age. The presence of green plants on the land increases the concentration of atmospheric water to an average of 1%. This raises the global mean temperature by 30 C, promoting the growth of plants. Volcanic release of CO2 will end an ice age by providing a large proportional increase in greenhouse gas, along with food for plants. The 2 C increase predicted for global warming is mostly due the increase in water vapor concentration over deserts. The effect of desert irrigation is several times larger. One can see this by being in the desert and experiencing the higher wet bulbs and morning lows.
Worzel
The largest danger to humanity, is not climate warming, thats just a carbon tax fantasy. Cold is the phenomenon that is likely to wipe out the human race, and most other life on this planet. The planet has been in an ever deepening ICE AGE for the last 40 million years or so, and it will continue for many millions more, and will get gradually colder. The Earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the centre of the galaxy, independent of the orbit of the galaxy. The period of that orbit is 600 million years, and the planet emerged from the last ''Snowball Earth'' event, 600 million years ago. (Make you own conclusions.) The Ice ages are caused by interstellar dust attenuating the suns energy reaching the planet during the planets passage through the arms of the galaxy. If I was a captain of an alien interstellar space ship carrying a ship load of potential colonists, and decided the Earth was just what I was looking for, but I needed to remove the creatures on the planet that were destroying it by desertification, on a gigantic scale, all I would need to do would be to lower the atmospheric CO2 level to 150 ppm. Once that level was reached, all plant life would start to die, together with all animal life dependent upon it, including humans. That could be easily engineered by seeding the atmosphere with reflective dust, readily accessible from the moon. As the climate cooled, the oceans would stop releasing CO2, and the rest would follow naturally. Seems they may be already doing it, but are getting humans to do it for them! Clever! Hey!