Nitrous Oxide Emissions
You’re going to have to change the priorities of your life if you love this planet - Helen Caldicott
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Nitrous oxide emissions could double by 2050, study finds
Emissions of nitrous oxide could double by the middle of the century if left unchecked, a new study finds. And nitrous oxide is the third biggest contributor to manmade climate warming. So should we be worried?
Laughing gas
Most people know nitrous oxide as ‘laughing gas’, used as a mild anaesthetic by doctors and dentists. But it is also a powerful greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide is the third-largest contributor to the manmade greenhouse effect, after carbon dioxide and methane.
A new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, brings together all the projections for future nitrous oxide emissions from different researchers.…
Resources
What Is Nitrous Oxide and Why Is It a Climate Threat?
Despite its increasing role in global warming and effect on the ozone layer, little has been done to rein in this climate pollutant. One big reason: agriculture.
Meet N2O, the greenhouse gas 300 times worse than CO2
Nitrous oxide has an atmospheric lifetime of 110 years. The process that removes nitrous oxide from the atmosphere also depletes ozone. So nitrous oxide is not only a greenhouse gas, but also an ozone destroyer.
Global agriculture and nitrous oxide emissions
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important anthropogenic greenhouse gas and agriculture represents its largest source. It is at the heart of debates over the efficacy of biofuels, the climate-forcing impact of population growth, and the extent to which mitigation of non-CO2 emissions can help avoid dangerous climate change.
Global Warming Could Make This Lurking Climate Threat Even Worse
Like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide (yes, the same stuff as laughing gas) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Although it’s thought to account for only about 6% of the greenhouse effect today, it is about 300 times worse for the climate than CO2. One major source is runoff from farms and fields. Bacteria breaking down nitrogen compounds from manure and synthetic fertilizers generate nitrous oxide as a waste product.
Greenhouse gas: why nitrous oxide is no laughing matter for the environment
Nitrous oxide (a molecule made of two nitrogen atoms and an oxygen atom) is over 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 and accounts for 6.3% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions. If nations are to meet their climate change targets, they need to pay attention to N2O. While the gas is best known for its recreational uses, most of it is actually generated through farming, where microbes in the soil combine oxygen (from the air) and nitrogen (added to farmland) to create new compounds. This results in the leaking of N2O gas from the soil. As more nitrogen is added to the soil more N2O is emitted, so the best way to manage emissions is to control the nitrogen added via synthetic fertilisers, manures and slurries.
Nitrogen Pollution: An Emerging Focus of Campus Sustainability Efforts
Humans have altered the nitrogen cycle at an astounding scale, creating 4 to 5 times as much reactive nitrogen as natural terrestrial processes. The result is excessive accumulation of reactive forms of nitrogen such as nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, ammonium and nitrous oxide, causing detrimental local and global impacts on public health, ecosystem health, air quality, water quality and the climate.
Nitrous oxide emissions from soils: how well do we understand the processes and their controls?
Although it is well established that soils are the dominating source for atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), we are still struggling to fully understand the complexity of the underlying microbial production and consumption processes and the links to biotic (e.g. inter- and intraspecies competition, food webs, plant–microbe interaction) and abiotic (e.g. soil climate, physics and chemistry) factors.
Nitrous Oxide Poses Fresh Threat to the Arctic
As permafrost thaws, emissions of this potent greenhouse gas increase.
We're Eating a Hole in Our Ozone
Nitrous oxide's impact on the ozone makes it our biggest threat right now, but without nitrogen fertilizers, the world couldn't eat.
Nitrous oxide emissions could double by 2050, study finds
Emissions of nitrous oxide could double by the middle of the century if left unchecked, a new study finds. And nitrous oxide is the third biggest contributor to manmade climate warming. So should we be worried?
Greenhouse Gas Online
Global man-made nitrous oxide emissions total about 8 million tonnes each year. Agricultural soils dominate man-made nitrous oxide emissions, with agriculture as a whole accounting for the vast majority of emissions.
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