This alarming missive just in from the: University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
As oxygen-deprived waters increase, they emit more greenhouse gasses into atmosphere
Above graphic from NOLA.COM click for details.
Cambridge, Md. (March 11, 2010) – The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” along the world’s coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts of global warming and contributing to ozone “holes” that cause an increase in our exposure to harmful UV radiation.
“As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases,” explains Dr. Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. “With low-oxygen waters currently producing about half of the ocean’s net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional significant atmospheric increase if these ‘dead zones’ continue to expand.”
Although present in minute concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere, nitrous oxide is a highly potent greenhouse gas and is becoming a key factor in stratospheric ozone destruction. For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on climate, but this may change. Just as human activities may be causing an unprecedented rise in the terrestrial N2O sources, marine N2O production may also rise substantially as a result of nutrient pollution, warming waters and ocean acidification. Because the marine environment is a net producer of N2O, much of this production will be lost to the atmosphere, thus further intensifying its climatic impact.
Increased N2O production occurs as dissolved oxygen levels decline. Under well-oxygenated conditions, microbes produce N2O at low rates. But at oxygen concentrations decrease to hypoxic levels, these waters can increase their production of N2O.
N2O production rates are particularly high in shallow suboxic and hypoxic waters because respiration and biological turnover rates are higher near the sunlit waters where phytoplankton produce the fuel for respiration.
When suboxic waters (oxygen essentially absent) occur at depths of less than 300 feet, the combination of high respiration rates, and the peculiarities of a process called denitrification can cause N2O production rates to be 10,000 times higher than the average for the open ocean. The future of marine N2O production depends critically on what will happen to the roughly ten percent of the ocean volume that is hypoxic and suboxic.
“Nitrous oxide data from many coastal zones that contain low oxygen waters are sparse, including Chesapeake Bay,” said Dr. Codispoti. “We should intensify our observations of the relationship between low oxygen concentrations and nitrous oxide in coastal waters.”
The article “Interesting Times for Nitrous Oxide” appears in the March 12, 2010 edition of the journal Science.
Seemingly balanced article on nitrogen in agriculture by (is it “a” or “an”?) MIT graduate student, published February 23 2010 (found by Google News). There are even brief disparaging comments against biofuels, oh my. Informative, good read. Perhaps commenters more knowledgeable than I on the subject will find something wrong.
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Mike Abbott (12:26:36) :
This research says dead zones contribute to climate change. Previous research says climate change contributes to dead zones. (See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311141213.htm.) Can they have it both ways?
They have to find those positive feedback loops that lead to catastrophic runaway effects to keep the CAGW hysteria strong. And look, there is another one! We Will All Surely DIE!
“For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on climate, but this may change.”
So it’s been 15 times higher in the past and “had modest impacts”.
A gotta watch!
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?71356252001
Does this mean I won’t have to buy balloons in the parking lot at Grateful Dead shows anymore?
I’ve been wondering about these “dead zones”. Are they “dead” as in devoid of all life, or merely devoid of species of interest to humans? This article seems to say that this terrifying production of “facecious air” happens by biological activity in the “dead” zones, so I guess it’s the latter. Very reassuring! Thanks, Anthony!
Best,
Frank
Science is dead. Why should I believe any of this doomsday propaganda? I think I’ll just go to a movie…and see…more propaganda.
Fortunately, the original thought to be green business of corn ethanol (by this I mean a thinly veiled farm subsidy wealth re-distribution scheme) has drastically increased this dead zone effect in the Gulf of Mexico just as the article states. So much for the well intentioned efforts of the green movement here in Minnesota (pioneering state in the ethanol scam) to save the planet.
Once a significant portion of the originally local farmer owned ethanol plants were bought up by corporate entities the green tide turned against it to some degree and it is stalled out at this time. Silly as this sounds, this kind of scare article, which the greenies will glom onto with both hands as the next great scare, may help stop the waste of time and money that most bio-fuels are and actually have a positive effect on the environment! I’m betting by that time the greenies will not recall that they began the ethanol movement in the first place.
Like some people who take a circular round of psychotropic drugs because their meds wear off after a couple of months, I’m betting they’ll need just one more gremlin then they can make a continuous cycle, too, consisting of CO2, Methane, NO2 and…, and… ok, Octane. Hey, don’t gasoline fumes cause global warming, either directly or indirectly. Then they’ll have the dirty four of global warming greenhouse gases. And as a jingle, it even rhymes!
Before anyone explodes in sarcasm –
Not everything is climate change. There are real problems requiring real asnwers and some real thought and discussion. Forget the extension and appeal to the ever popular AGW-Mob, maybe he believes it, maybe he believes the problem is big enough that he had to swallow his pride, couch the piece in “Global Change” crap just to get published.
Appeal – look at the real problem and don’t make so many jokes.
“The problem is silt and fertilizer run-off. Things that are being ignored with all this global warming crap”
That is why organic farming is best… it puts the nutrients back into the earth… including microorganisms and just doesn’t drop NPK (petrol based) on the earth for shallow runoff. Even cow dung worked back into the soil is a good thing… imagine that.
GMO and excessive ferts on our lands DO NOT and WILL NOT do this wondrous ‘feed the earth’ campaign. In fact, that crap has very little nutrition. You have to eat MORE of a product to get what was once in every piece.
If you ever have the chance to compare fruit/veg from a true organic farm vs an NPK farm only (with crappy soil) you will notice the difference.
It isn’t that hard to take steps to reduce nutrient releases to waterways. I think we can all agree that reducing “dead zones” and fishkills is a good thing.
A perfectly reasonable argument can be made to try to minimize runoff that creates algal blooms that can then seriously affect ocean aquatic life… right until they use that to say it’s affecting climate change. It’s so sad, they literally miss the point just to say, “oh god, this helps put us over into tipping point, so it must be stopped because of that this imagined fear of total destruction of the biosphere.” They’d get more done if they simply demonstrated what dead areas are like to farmers and jointly looked for a solution.
jorgekafkazar (13:02:42) :
Science is dead
Just imagined ♪THRILLER♪ with all those SCIENTISTS-ZOMBIES, James “death-trains” Hansen, Al “Baby” Gordo Gore, etc.etc. dancing over the graves…
They sure are gullible. The risk and drama must be high because the cry for funding is so strong. These guys are kinda stupid. We have cyclones, hurricanes and even tsunamis that stir the water. I am so thankfull that this web site shows some of the drama for what it is. We can see dead spots, some fish kill, decay and the cycle starts over. Aglae grows and creates O2 bubbles and absorbs CO2.
The unknown sink that’s absorbing 20 to 30% of emitted CO2 picked up steam in the late 1930’s. Possibly not coincidentally, that’s when synthetic nitrogen containing fertilizers like ammonia and urea started to become widely available. If there is a link, then one could argue that we’re already geoengineering to mitigate CO2 emissions.
“Even cow dung worked back into the soil is a good thing… ”
Sorry, but that is incorrect. Animal dung spread on a field is the cause of more eutrophication than the correct usage and application of “chemical” fertilizers. It is a pracitce which is actively discouraged here in the UK.
I can make the case that most of Al Gore’s brain is aquatic and no arguments from me against ‘aquatic dead zones’ in that regard . Is this dead zone trending to ‘normal’ or away from ‘normal’? Which brings up Al again. Is AL normal?
““The problem is silt and fertilizer run-off. Things that are being ignored with all this global warming crap”
That is why organic farming is best…”
Actually it isn’t. The productivity of organic farming is so poor that the need for extra farming land to compensate it nullifies any possible benefits in lower fertilizer run-off – that is, run-off per km^2 may be less, but you need much more km^2s to get the same amount of food.
It’s almost amusing that worrying about CO2 is diverting attention from seas that are little more tha toxic cess pools
“Tests have shown that some species of Baltic fish have too high levels of dioxin and the EU has called for a ban on sales of fish exceeding permitted levels from July 1.
Dioxins – cancer-causing toxic chemical compounds caused by burning plastic, fuel and rubbish – are hard to break down once they get into the food chain. They are also found in dairy products, meat and eggs.”
Don’t think that Baltic fish can’t be sold for human consumption
“As a result, Sweden and neighbouring Finland have been granted an exemption from the EU directive and can continue to sell the fish on their national markets until the end of 2006.
A condition of this is that the health authorities of both countries must tell people how much Baltic Sea fish can be consumed without harmful effects.”
Yummy yummy.
I seem to recall hearing that there isn’t a safe level of dioxin. There are much more toxic substances in the environment to worry about.
It seems odd that the article didn’t mention algae blooms or red tides (which have been around for a long time). Though the graphic did.
Dead zones increased in part by fertilizer runoff from marginal lands put into production to produce ethanol for bio-fuels.
Thus the AGW hypothesis has increased the dead zones. Talk about your positive feedback!
“further exacerbating the impacts of global warming and contributing to ozone “holes” that cause an increase in our exposure to harmful UV radiation.”
But, I thought the ozone hole was what was keeping Antarctica cool:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424113454.htm
So, they balance out, right?
😉
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/insitu/cats/conc/brwn2o.html
Nothing to see here….
S1P (13:10:35) :
(…)
If you ever have the chance to compare fruit/veg from a true organic farm vs an NPK farm only (with crappy soil) you will notice the difference.
Sure I do. When I buy organic, I can feel my wallet hurting more.
There is an issue with nutrition loss over time. Stuff that is fresh-picked and bought same day at a farmer’s stand down the road, or at a local farmer’s market, can taste better and have more nutrition than what is at the supermarket that was shipped in from Central and South America, whether it is “true” organic or conventionally grown. The tests are in, as found at a supermarket it makes no difference nutrition-wise if you’re buying organic or non-organic fresh produce.
These “true” organic farms, whatever you are using for a definition, can be small operations that sell locally, versus “normal” farms that often sell to supermarkets and bulk processors. When you head on down to your local farmer’s co-op and buy “true” organic, the differences could be strictly time based. So you better have some reputable studies demonstrating how “true” organic is better that account for time-from-picking in the testing.
And did you really just make a blanket declaration that genetically modified crops have little nutrition? You better have a lot of reputable research to back that one up. Also, some are modified to grow under harsh conditions where other crops fail. Isn’t some food better than none at all?
I wish some people here would not make sarcastic comments about EVERY thread … this issue of urban and agricultural run off has been a major issue for years. It may have a spurious or real link to some sort of global warming process. I personally am not an enthusiastic supporter of AGW but I have no doubt that man impacts the environment he lives in. I was one of the first engineering graduates from the University of British Columbia Water and Pollution option of Civil Engineering almost 40 years ago. Ocean dead zones were already an issue way back then. I spent a career “mitigating” damages in the development of projects. I try to stay somewhat informed on environmental issues and when I see readers of this blog making denigrating comments about what is probably reasonably good science and an issue of significant concern, I become a bit saddened on behalf of what should be reasoned discussion. I am seeing more and more of the kind of comments on this site that I would expect to see over at RealClimate.
Everyone should be concerned about our oceans, rivers, lakes, and land. We should be concerned about overfishing, appropriate resource development, health care, chemical and industrial pollution, management of our own wastes and so on. I spent a career doing that. It is sad to see so many resources wasted on bitching about a bit of global warming that for me, increases my hay crop and provides more feed and carbon sequestering potential.
I like this blog and read it daily when I can, but it would be nice to see a few more positive ideas on how we might provide redirection and solutions instead of sarcasm and denigration.
The sun is shining outside, the snow will be gone in a few weeks, life is good.
From the Great White North, Faraway, Alberta, Canada … and yes it is a real place though you won’t find it on most maps.
Dead fish and dead seas are not a hoax, don’t smell like a hoax, don’t look like a hoax, and don’t feel like a hoax.
But the subject of attributing everything going wrong in the world to AGW is a hoax.
This killing of ocean areas in the article might be a major issue. But it will be the fact that we are warming our rivers too much with industrial usages and poisoning them with agricultural and industrial run-off.
The extra CO2 in the air is a blind to raise attention. Pollution is the first enemy.
For example using nuclear power is often considered “carbon neutral”, but it warms the nearby river more than a coal station. It would be worse from the viewpoint of killing rivers, not better.