Pep Canadell, CSIRO; Eric Davidson, University of Maryland, Baltimore; Glen Peters, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo; Hanqin Tian, Auburn University; Michael Prather, University of California, Irvine; Paul Krummel, CSIRO; Rob Jackson, Stanford University; Rona Thompson, Norwegian Institute for Air Research, and Wilfried Winiwarter, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Nitrous oxide from agriculture and other sources is accumulating in the atmosphere so quickly it puts Earth on track for a dangerous 3℃ warming this century, our new research has found.
Each year, more than 100 million tonnes of nitrogen are spread on crops in the form of synthetic fertiliser. The same amount again is put onto pastures and crops in manure from livestock.
This colossal amount of nitrogen makes crops and pastures grow more abundantly. But it also releases nitrous oxide (N₂O), a greenhouse gas.
Agriculture is the main cause of the increasing concentrations, and is likely to remain so this century. N₂O emissions from agriculture and industry can be reduced, and we must take urgent action if we hope to stabilise Earth’s climate.
Where does nitrous oxide come from?
We found that N₂O emissions from natural sources, such as soils and oceans, have not changed much in recent decades. But emissions from human sources have increased rapidly.
Atmospheric concentrations of N₂O reached 331 parts per billion in 2018, 22% above levels around the year 1750, before the industrial era began.
Agriculture caused almost 70% of global N₂O emissions in the decade to 2016. The emissions are created through microbial processes in soils. The use of nitrogen in synthetic fertilisers and manure is a key driver of this process.
Other human sources of N₂O include the chemical industry, waste water and the burning of fossil fuels.
Read more: Intensive farming is eating up the Australian continent – but there’s another way
N₂O is destroyed in the upper atmosphere, primarily by solar radiation. But humans are emitting N₂O faster than it’s being destroyed, so it’s accumulating in the atmosphere.
N₂O both depletes the ozone layer and contributes to global warming.
As a greenhouse gas, N₂O has 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and stays in the atmosphere for an average 116 years. It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane.
N₂O depletes the ozone layer when it interacts with ozone gas in the stratosphere. Other ozone-depleting substances, such as chemicals containing chlorine and bromine, have been banned under the United Nations Montreal Protocol. N₂O is not banned under the protocol, although the Paris Agreement seeks to reduce its concentrations.
What we found
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed scenarios for the future, outlining the different pathways the world could take on emission reduction by 2100. Our research found N₂O concentrations have begun to exceed the levels predicted across all scenarios.
The current concentrations are in line with a global average temperature increase of well above 3℃ this century.
We found that global human-caused N₂O emissions have grown by 30% over the past three decades. Emissions from agriculture mostly came from synthetic nitrogen fertiliser used in East Asia, Europe, South Asia and North America. Emissions from Africa and South America are dominated by emissions from livestock manure.
In terms of emissions growth, the highest contributions come from emerging economies – particularly Brazil, China, and India – where crop production and livestock numbers have increased rapidly in recent decades.
N₂O emissions from Australia have been stable over the past decade. Increase in emissions from agriculture and waste have been offset by a decline in emissions from industry and fossil fuels.
What to do?
N₂O must be part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and there is already work being done. Since the late 1990s, for example, efforts to reduce emissions from the chemicals industry have been successful, particularly in the production of nylon, in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Reducing emissions from agriculture is more difficult – food production must be maintained and there is no simple alternative to nitrogen fertilisers. But some options do exist.
Read more: Emissions of methane – a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide – are rising dangerously
In Europe over the past two decades, N₂O emissions have fallen as agricultural productivity increased. This was largely achieved through government policies to reduce pollution in waterways and drinking water, which encouraged more efficient fertiliser use.
Other ways to reduce N₂O emissions from agriculture include:
- better management of animal manure
- applying fertiliser in a way that better matches the needs of growing plants
- alternating crops to include those that produce their own nitrogen, such as legumes, to reduce the need for fertiliser
- enhanced efficiency fertilisers that lower N₂O production.
Getting to net-zero emissions
Stopping the overuse of nitrogen fertilisers is not just good for the climate. It can also reduce water pollution and increase farm profitability.
Even with the right agricultural policies and actions, synthetic and manure fertilisers will be needed. To bring the sector to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, as needed to stabilise the climate, new technologies will be required.
Read more: Earth may temporarily pass dangerous 1.5℃ warming limit by 2024, major new report says
Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO; Eric Davidson, Director, Appalachian Laboratory and Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore; Glen Peters, Research Director, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo; Hanqin Tian, Director, International Center for Climate and Global Change Research, Auburn University; Michael Prather, Distinguished Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine; Paul Krummel, Research Group Leader, CSIRO; Rob Jackson, Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University; Rona Thompson, Senior scientist, Norwegian Institute for Air Research, and Wilfried Winiwarter, , International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Nitrous oxide jeopardizes earths future. This is no laughing matter. But when I saw the concentration scale in the figure NO2 vs years, I couldn’t stop laughing. The change is 265 to 330 parts per Billion. Rounding that off to parts per million gives 0.3 to 0.3 parts per million. Beam me up, Scotty, there’s too much NO2 on this planet.
N2O and NO2 are two different chemicals. The subject in this case is N2O.
Each has different chemical properties, concentrations, and roles withing the global biogeochemical Nitrogen cycle.
I think it was just typed wrong, Nitrous oxide is what he was addressing as in the article.
It’s all the fault of Vegans
China again > ‘Super-Pollutant’ Emitted by 11 Chinese Chemical Plants Could Equal a Climate Catastrophe
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04082020/china-n2o-super-pollutant-nylon-emissions-climate-change
You mean the TOFU TALIBAN? (new term I heard recently to describe the vegan, woke, non binary, tree hugging, anti human, marxist, nutbar, etc. cult members)
I like tofu!
bwegher, my bad for laughing when I shold have been reading. However, the amounts reported in the atmosphere all over the world are so small, their actual content is in serious doubt. I spent a half-hour reading about spectrometers and sounding radiometers, etc, and came away thinking either they are not even close to analyzing the actual N2O content or there is so much in-fighting in the discipline it can’t be figured out. Still not at danger levels as far as I’m concerned.
Stop growing food WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.
Guess you didn’t read very much before replying did you??
“Reducing emissions from agriculture is more difficult – food production must be maintained and there is no simple alternative to nitrogen fertilisers. But some options do exist.”
Its actually very reasonable, they talk about showing farmers how to improve efficiency of use.
And yes Charles I was wondering if they were going to mention the dominant greenhouse gas as well….
Its actually very reasonable?
Actually no.
They ‘talk’ about showing farmers how to improve efficiency, because clearly farmers are dim witted slow talking people with tractor fetishes who know nothing about their job and live in pig headed ignorance about anything that could possibly improve their yield while reducing their costs.
Is stage two of this master plan to seek out some elderly relatives in the poultry business and correct their errors in lip/egg interaction?
Remember that ANYTHING can sound reasonable if you don’t actually have to do it yourself or explain in detail the actual act. Everything is in the wording. Back in the day there was a plan by the city council to block a major east/west second of road in the centre of the city to make the north and south halves of the central square into a mega area where events could be held. People countered “what about the traffic?” to which they commissioned surveys to support their plan.
The actual survey question was “would you accept an increase of 2mins in your daily drive to work?” to which most people would think “That sounds reasonable. I take 40mins. 2 on top of 40 isn’t that bad, I guess”.
Then you realise that what they are saying is that closing this short section of road (about 150m I guess) would add 2mins as you are forced to loop around. So they are not adding 2mins to a 40min trip from your home to workplace, they are adding minutes to a 150m drive.
But… it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Only 2 extra minutes…
Then again, I guess we should be grateful your proposal is only reasonable and not modest.
I knew. They want us to starve to death.
It’s the di-hydrogen monoxide that worries me.
The dominant ‘greenhouse gas’ and it barely gets a mention!
Agreed. Quote: “It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane.” They forgot water again, which is the most important greenhouse gas and essential for life, as is CO2. N2O is the fourth most important greenhouse gas, and not really very important.
Yes. To quote a famous cartoon character, “what a maroon!”
I recently saw a comment from Prof. Ian Clark (Ottawa, Canada). Using carbon isotope methodology, he estimated the CO2 cycle time to be around 4 years! Not thousands of years…
“Lasts up to”: what does that mean, when CO2 is constantly being consumed and new CO2 is being produced?
Ron: But it’s 300 times more powerful than CO2, so if it doubles it will result in 1.5 x 300 = 450 to 4.5 x 300 =1350 degrees C of warming (based on CO2 ECS of 1.5 to 4.5 C per doubling). So if N2O gets to 6 ppb we’re doomed.
Better yet. No gas at any concentration when at -17 deg C can warm Earth’s surface at 15 deg C. It’s thermodynamically for a cold gas to emit any radiation to a warmer surface that will warm that surface. The radiation will be reflected as the energy levels equivalent to -17 deg C are already full.
So, for all intents and purposes there is not such thing as a greenhouse gas.
If the increase in N2O is 65ppb this is 0.065ppm
At 300 times the effectiveness of CO2 this gives 0.065 *300 =19.5ppm equivalent of CO2.
I hope I have got the calculation right!
At present the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 410ppm, with the level in the average room 1000ppm.
If most of the increase is attributed to change in farming methods, it should be remembered that the world population is forecast to rise to 10bn, .
Farmers don’t like spending money, so any input has to be justified in improved output and profit, otherwise why bother with farming and just hunker down and produce food for oneself and family.
The proposed changes to farming practice are already being carried out by farmers in Europe as is stated in the article.
As for achieving net zero N2O, we will have to get rid of all the pesky manure producing animals from Africa and the rest of the world. And do termites produce N2O in the same way as they are reported to produce vast quantities of CO2?
re termites Dont you mean Methane?
They can’t make a coherent case for CO2, so they push it on to N2O which returns less than 2 W/m^2 to the surface. In other words, of the 150 W per W/m^2 of surface emissions above and beyond the 240 W/m^2 of solar forcing, less than 1% is offset by N2O re-emissions while about 20% is offset from co2 re-emissions and most of the rest is offset from energy returned to the surface by water vapor and clouds.
The whole CO2 = global warming issue is simply a political construct with bought and paid for political ‘scientists’.
We must stop all food production — zero food, not zero carbon. That will end all worries about climate change. I see another hockey stick here!
Ban whipped cream cans immediately. That should give us 10 more years.
I’m not sure I get the whole nitrous oxide thing. It has four very narrow IR absorption peaks at 4, 7.7, 7.8, and 17 microns. (https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C10024972&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC)
There isn’t enough energy, either incident from the Sun or radiated from the Earth, to make a whit of difference in the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Especially at the laughably (pun intended) puny concentration they’re talking about.
CO2, the demon of all greenhouse gases has only three IR bands, equivalent to 800, 400, and -80 deg C. So, at atmospheric temperature of -17 deg C in the upper tropical troposphere (which is supposed to be the source of global warming from climate science) can only use the -80 deg C band, which means that CO2’s main function is to cool the planet as any IR radiated will be reflected from the surface and then lost to space. That is what CO2 and water vapor do all night long, being radiative gases in the real world, not the mythological world of greenhouse gases. Thermodynamic physicists are just no giving up on trying to make CO2 warm anything and admitting that it is the world’s best coolant/refrigerant.
Charles Higley October 12, 2020 at 9:34 pm
CO2, the demon of all greenhouse gases has only three IR bands, equivalent to 800, 400, and -80 deg C.
The usual nonsense, there is no such thing as the temperature equivalent of the IR bands. The idea that the 15 micron band because it will be reflected from the Earth is garbage, its absorption is typically over 90%
Phil,
Wien’s displacement Law, color temperature, … It’s just not common practice to apply these quantifications to atmospheric absorption bands.
Replace ‘reflected’ with ‘about half the energy is eventually returned by GHG re-emission’ and it would be more accurate. It’s kind of like a reflection that takes more time since for any re-emission to get back to the surface, it has to avoid being absorbed again which may take many 1000’s of absorption/re-emission cycles spread across many 1000’s of GHG molcules. Unlike reflection, it’s never the same photon being returned even as it may be the same energy.
The idea that the GHG effect is non radiant where atmospheric absorption is almost instantly converted into translational kinetic energy and it’s this that heats the surface is a red herring. The evidence is significant power at TOA in absorption bands under clear skies where surface photons emitted in those bands have nearly a 100% chance of being absorbed by a GHG molecule and would never get to TOA directly. Atmospheric O2/N2 does not emit energy in those bands and there’s so much energy in absorption bands at TOA, it can only originate from energized GHG molecules.
Alarmist alert! New bogeyman! This one fits in perfectly for reducing population. If you can’t starve and freeze people to death by removing their energy source the most logical and easiest method is limit their food.
We’re all Kulaks now.
Absolutely brilliant idea. Could all Leftists, phony leftists and other assorted f-wits please stop supporting agriculture by their bad habits of eating stuff.
With fertilizer emissions, animal methane emissions, deforestation, and emissions from tilling the soil, I think farming should be banned. (Sarc)
I think humans should be banned. Can we just get rid of these f-wits first …..
…… and then pop the champage corks.
The authors of the above research article are the reason William F. Buckley wrote in the magazine Esquire in 1961:
““I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory,” he said, “than by the Harvard University faculty.”
Universities even in 1961 we being taken over by the Intellectual Idiot class. Mr. Buckley realized these “academic intellectuals” thought too highly of themselves and their willingness to dictate with the police powers of the State their beliefs on everyone else.
The political science prof at the college I attended a bit after that (1967 IIRC) ran for a seat on the city council and actually got elected. Probably luckily, he resigned a few months afterwards. He couldn’t be bothered to show up for meetings.
“It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane.”
Tsk! And here’s me thinking that the most important greenhouse gas was water vapour. I wonder what else I might have been wrong about all these years!
Ozone also has a larger GHG influence than either CH4 of N2O and of course in this context, ‘most important’ is a weasle phrase given how unimportant N2O actually is to the surface temperature.
Please, I thought most calculations assumed around 7 years. But, this may refer to white CO2 from farming and heating. /SARC
When I read the 1000 year flop, I had to assume the rest was without any trace of proportionate sound evaluation.
This is sad, because if there is a serious issue, then let’s have a sound scientific report with sensible human readable conclusion, which we then can evaluate and see what we eventually can do to minimize the effect.
Creating a report so propagandistic as this one is not helpful to society, and is only helpful to special interests.
Indeed you quoted exactly what they wrote”
“As a greenhouse gas, N₂O has 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and stays in the atmosphere for an average 116 years. It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane.”
Now what is the first most important before CO2 and methane? They don’t know. Cannot name water!
Male Bovine Excrement!
The next claim will be that O2 is 20,000 times more potent than CO2 as a green house gas and we need to reduce it to stop global climate change. With, the side benefit that wildfires will no longer be an issue, of course.
Max P
Well ironically N2 and O2 are responsible for most of the thermal enhancement of the surface from the atmosphere, that is if you believe in the kinetic theory of gases.
They won’t learn it, climate is nothing humans are able to stabilise.
From 270 to 340 ppb is an increase by 20%. 300ppb is 0.3 ppm, a factor 1000 less than CO2. It will have a long way to go before the climate takes any notice.
You got that right. It’s an increase of 0.00003% absolute. Besides, farmers don’t want to use any more fertilizer than is needed.
Spot on. That is why some farmers pay to have drone pilots, with tailored cameras, to fly over their crops and create orthographic maps showing which areas need more or less fertilizer.
Looks like the Globalists at the UN IPCC are starting to realise that , with the overwhelming proof that CO2 is not to blame for Global Warming , they need another story to keep their scam going .
So the new frightener is Nitrous Oxides .
In the UK air qualities are monitored , & over the last 50 years the levels of Nitrous Oxides in the air have fallen by 74 % .
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emissions-of-air-pollutants/annual-emissions-of-nitrogen-oxides-in-the-uk-1970-2018
But no doubt they will make up a whole new load of lies to try to keep the farce alive .
“But no doubt they will make up a whole new load of lies to try to keep the farce alive”
Because ‘ Green Lies Matter’
So the answer to this crisis is, like many others, to keep people in India and Africa from using technologies that would increase food production, heat their homes and cook their food. Nice!
IRW: “…proof that CO2 is not to blame for Global Warming , they need another story to keep their scam going…” Different scam focal point this time. This time it’s to reduce population and the last one was to cripple Capitalism.
Nitrous Oxide is N2O the pollutants you refer to are nitric oxides NOx such as NO2 and NO, completely different.
‘we must take urgent action if we hope to stabilise Earth’s climate.’
I just the humility displayed here….
Let me know when the directive is to burn (or compost) those food stamps from big brother. We have always been at war with NOx.
Is that a hockey stick I see?
At least the trend is visible in the two different measurement techniques so they are miles ahead of Mann…
I saw this years ago with the creation of “carbon pollution” & predicted the next “pollutant” would be Nitrogen. Have these “looney toons” ever taken organic chemistry? I doubt it!
This won’t go over well in the head long rush to stampede the public into carbon taxes. Focus, focus said the climate consultants and media teams. But then libs are always working on the phased-in BS approach as opposed to fact checking anything.
I’ll argue better farming practices by every farmer will benefit us all (some are doing the right things). Runoff into streams, lakes and estuaries cause algae blooms which are not good for just about anyone or anything. Even the algae that bloom are killing themselves. One worst case is Lake Okeechobee which is choking with about everything bad and a culmination of poor planning for a century.
That said, I guess since CO2 isn’t working out, they all need something even worse to keep up the scam. Since it occurs in such small numbers it isn’t hard to get a large percentage increase on just a couple of molecules per billion.
These people are incompatible with civilisation / humanity. Now advocating mass global famine.
No, they are only advocating famine for mere peons like you and me, not for themselves.
I’m not a peon. At the appropriate time, I’m going to play my part in their destruction.
Let us not forget this.
“It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane.“
What about water vapor importance as greenhouse gas? To truly understand climate change we must concentrate on the complexity of the water cycle rather than it being a forcing factor for CO2 and N2O. Climate models, the tail wagging the dog when the most important greenhouse gasses cannot be listed properly.
“CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere)”
I was under the impression that the CO2 GHG factor was based on a lifetime of 100 years, not thousands of years. And I thought the science was settled.
A standard hysteric technique is to post a scary graph and hope no one looks at the units. Water is present at parts per hundred, CO2 at parts per million, nitrous oxide at parts per billion. If you put them all on one graph with the units at parts per hundred the hysterics would be exposed.
And if they are going to reference the Antarctic ice core they should include the fact that temperature change precedes CO2 change. I think we can safely assume the same will be true for nitrous oxide.
N2O is part of the global biogeochemical Nitrogen cycle.
At least try to understand the basic cycle to place N2O changes within that large framework.
Saying that N2O “accumulates” anywhere is simply naive.
A paper showing some of the basics is at
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5412885/
The Nitrogen cycle has been evolving on Earth for a long time, just like life itself.
Atmospheric N2O 0.00003% run for the hills, we are all going to die. When it cooled from 1945 they said Co2 would cause another ice age that would disrupt the food chain and make weather worse. Whe it began warming from 1970 the same judicious idiots said Co2 would cause catastrophic global warming that would disrupt the food chain. Now that we grow enough food for ten billion and there has been no CAGW its intensive farming – efficient advanced farming using gm seeds fuelled by fossil fuels and man made tractors – its the fertiliser that will cause CAGW that Co2 did not.
Having read the study apparently the figure we need to be concerned about is an annual rise of 1.4% of N2O.
A new trace gas correlation with human activity. If we could make the Earth uninhabitable by humans I suspect the problem would go away.
When will we understand just how little effect humanity has on the natural cycles of mother nature.
Somehow I got to this page: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-explore-future-climate-change which explains how they developed the SPP mechanism, which seenms to have added another layer of BS on top of the already faulty models.
And guess what, it’s worse than we thought! No mention made of how far these things diverge from reality, but they look way off. Way too many relationships, variables and fanciful expectations. They will need a lot more equipment, computing horsepower and just plain money to shove this thing down the public’s throat.
Ollie: ” Well if it isn’t one thing… it’s another”
Stanley: “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
From the article: “As a greenhouse gas, N₂O has 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO₂) …” OK then, still not a detectable difference from zero, as I see it. Next.
Pretty much everything is a much stronger greenhouse gas than is CO2.
So why do we care about CO2?