A new study by MIT has revealed that the quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O),otherwise known as laughing gas, being released by the world's oceans has been dramatically underestimated. Heightened levels of N2O have the potential to seriously influence the health of our planet's ozone layer, as the gas is around 300 times more potent than the more prevalent menace of carbon dioxide emissions.
N2O is created, and subsequently largely destroyed, in the boundary between the oxygen saturated layer of water near an ocean's surface, and the anoxic waters that lie beneath. Nitrogen is initially introduced to the marine environment from a number of sources, including as a runoff from agricultural fertilizer in the form of ammonia. The nitrogen is then consumed by bacteria and marine microbes that produce N2O as a byproduct.
“The denitrifying bacteria that produce N2O also consume it, and it was thought that these two processes are pretty tightly coupled,”states Andrew Babbin, MIT postdoc at the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering and lead author of a paper on the study. "But that’s not the case in the suboxiclayer, resulting in leftover N2O that leaks away to the surface."
Prior to the study, it was not well understood just how much of the gas was escaping the ocean and entering the environment above, and the potential harm that this could be inflicting on our planet's fragile atmosphere.
Babbin and his team were able to gain a better understanding by making a computer analysis of water samples from various depths at three different locations in the eastern tropical North Pacific, in order to determine denitrification rates for the region.
Results appear to show that previous estimates on the quantities of N2O escaping the oceans may have been off by as much as a factor of 10. By making use of recent climate models, Babbin and his team estimate that our world's oceans could be producing as much as 4 million metric tons ofN2O per year
This output of the harmful gas has the potential to seriously harm Earth's ozone layer, and it is predicted that production will rise as agricultural growth continues, introducing ever more nitrogen into Earth's oceans.
Source: MIT
At long last the climate scientists are getting out and doing some actual physical measurements rather than relying on computer models.
I also note that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has just discovered that corral is quite happy in a slightly less basic sea environment as well.
How can they know that if this is the first time they have conducted proper tests, perhaps this level is perfectly normal?
It seems as though environmental scientists/writers will always evaluate evidence and information with the assumption that the pre-existing theory is correct. That's not science and that's why I have a major problem with many of the theories in regard to global warming, or as they now call it 'climate change' - perhaps because the extreme predictions they were originally making have not come to pass.
Before I get roasted, I'll say this. I'm not sure if it's correct or incorrect but bad science is bad science.
It's much like the dietary recommendations from half a century ago that had almost no evidence behind them, they relied on correlation and information bias and they had the arrogance to call that science. They are starting to perform actual science to confirm those assumptions that the recommendations are based on and guess what? Some have been incorrect and sometimes completely incorrect.
@Skipjack: Not negligible, but definitely doesn't mean we shouldn't be cutting back big-time on human-caused CO2 levels.
If some people reading this article want to point fingers at the ocean in an attempt to justify their own ignorance, that's their prerogative. Even if it's at the expense of their children's-children's, unborn children.
I'm still counting on Space X to get us to Mars (and beyond). Because I imagine each time we humans "jump ship" to another planet we would wise-up as a human race.
Lithium mining, refining, and production doesn't create more CO2 than the system it's implemented into puts out, right? We solved that whole "laws of physics" thing with the Prius, didn't we?
In fact, real science is never settled.
We should not be blindly following people and organizations who make big money by saying the science is settled (Al Gore, David Suzuki, Green Peace, etc.).
And just HOW long has the ocean been doing this? Well.. of course, only since the industrial revolution tight? That way we can let the politicians making money from the AGW farce keep making money and putting in more controls.
The only ignorant people on the AGW debate are those who refuse to read the ICC report (the UN's go to for AGW research promotion as "science") which turned out to show there had been no AGW. Google "Game over IPCC quietly concedes defeat" and READ THE DATA YOURSELF.
It does not matter what person WANTS to believe, or what they are taught as being true when the initial information is false.
Anyone reading the Climategate letters would also have been aware of the ridiculous lie foisted upon us. But instead the people for AGW just believed the media's lies - instead of READING THE DATA THEMSELVES - once again proving modern man is mostly marionette-minded.