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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Salute!
Well, hell!
There goes my next visit to get a root canal. Sheesh. Always the negative waves.
Gums sends…
0.3 ppm! I’m all for making applications of fertilizer more efficient, but this “worry” is a fictitious problem. They even admit it by saying it’s the third biggest GHG and that’s after excluding water vapor which is the overwhelming GHG. They have over estimated warming by 300% and this includes contributions from all sources – WVp, CO2, CH4, and natural variability. I dispute the longevity of the gas in the atmosphere since it is quite soluble in water (think rain) but let’s let them have it.
This is the climate wroughters’ answer to the bumper crops and the Great Greening which causes so much demagogue heartburn, giving as it does an enormous positive value to ‘carbon’ emissions.
Well, this does explain why all those various species of ancient elephant relatives, such as elephas and mammoth and mastodon ( among others) all died out. Too much giant four-legger poo contributed so much nitrous this & that to the atmosphere that all those antiques just never had a chance. Mastodons, especially – poor things were doomed by their own defecatory byproducts. Sad.
Dino and his family also made too much poo and was a household pet in the Stone’s families. Eventually we are now left with only the bones and some great documentaries.
We know from these documentaries that the people back then all drove Green cars, thus no CO2. Therefore we can conclude it was the N2O from the household Dino families’ poo that made Earth uninhabitable over 50 million years ago.
Now Earth had 50 million years to recover by reduced GHG concentration. The Dino families never rose again, but the household cow made it to great number and is now threatening to poo themselves and the new generation Stone families in oblivion again.
This is called the 50 million year cycle. I would like to be the lead author in a UN finance study to investigate the inner workings of this 50 million year cycle.
The estimated budget will be US $50 million annually and dispensation to use private jet for meetings.
I have not yet made a feasibility study, as this tends to be of no value to the UN and could turn out negatively for the project.
“household pet in the Stone’s families” – are you sure you didn’t mistype and mean “Sanders families”?
Flintstones
we must take urgent action
It always requires “urgent action” doesn’t it?
Urgency can be defined as being 6 minutes from home knowing you are going to crap your pants in 5 minutes.
Joe Biden just solves that problem with Depends.
….. and having a police car just behind you in a 50kph zone ! 🙁
“[N2O] stays in the atmosphere for an average 116 years.” What does this mean? What is the half-life?
Yes this is why very warm during dinosaur time. All that Dino poop. Joe Biden is a living example of a coprolite.
After the CO2 buffoonery, the water vapor made the front page of the climate farce, a few years ago and then came the CH4 and now it’s the turn of the N2O to take the lead of this tomfoolery …
The climate clown show never ends.
“…and we must take urgent action if we hope to stabilise [sic] Earth’s climate.”
When has the Earth’s climate ever been stable?
Fit Nitrous to every car.
We can use Nitrous credits to offset our carbon taxes?
win Win
Why is this a problem now ?
I mean … the science is settled
This just more elaborate hocus-pocus voodoo magic claims about how humanity must to turn over all control of our energy and food to those who claim to know how to save us from our folly and they’ll fix the weather. They wrap in science sounding junk claims about how producing food with modern fertilizers is going to lead to humanity’s demise. Only our claimed “betters” know how to appease the angry climate gods in this pagan climate religion, and they demands our sacrifices be paid to them. Like Hillary, most of this kind sees 95% of humanity as Deplorables to be starved and put to their gas chambers when we get too numerous.
It’s quite clear humanity’s demise in the form of pan-genocide would be the result of following the directives to stop using mass produced nitrogen fertilizers. It would be a 21st Century result that would make Stalin’s kulak pogrom-induced starvation of 10’s of millions in the 1920’s-1930’s look like a warm-up session for population control.
This is truly frightening stuff if these humanity-hating, power hungry elitists are allowed near the levers of political power. Give them power like was given Stalin, Mao, Castro, the Nork’s Kim family, and Hugo Chavez to name a few, and the results will be the same on Western countries they control.
They claim to be our “betters” as all despotic authoritarians have claimed through history. It was only the Enlightenment that brought about freeing the human condition from despotism that produced the scientific and industrial revolution that brought humanity out of the short, harsh, brutish life the vast majority of humanity endured since civilizations became organized.
This just more elaborate hocus-pocus voodoo magic claims about how humanity must to turn over all control of our energy and food to those who claim to know how to save us from our folly and they’ll fix the weather. They wrap in science sounding junk claims about how producing food with modern fertilizers is going to lead to humanity’s demise. Only our claimed “betters” know how to appease the angry climate gods in this pagan climate religion, and they demands our sacrifices be paid to them. Most of this kind of intellectuals are elitists who see 95% of humanity as Deplorables to be starved and put to their gas chambers when we get too numerous.
It’s quite clear humanity’s demise in the form of pan-genocide would be the result of following the directives to stop using mass produced nitrogen fertilizers. It would be a 21st Century result that would make Stalin’s kulak pogrom-induced starvation of 10’s of millions in the 1920’s-1930’s look like a warm-up session for population control.
This is truly frightening stuff if these humanity-hating, power hungry elitists are allowed near the levers of political power. Give them power like was given Stalin, Mao, Castro, the Nork’s Kim family, and Hugo Chavez to name a few, and the results will be the same on Western countries they control.
They claim to be our “betters” as all despotic authoritarians have claimed through history. It was only the Enlightenment that brought about freeing the human condition from despotism that produced the scientific and industrial revolution that brought humanity out of the short, harsh, brutish life the vast majority of humanity endured since civilizations became organized.
From the graph accompanying this article, it appears that (according to Antarctic ice samples), N2O levels started increasing around the year 1850 (give or take a few decades). Were farmers in China and India (which the article claims are the major culprits) using a lot of nitrogen fertilizers back then? This was before the advent of cars, which also contribute to nitrogen oxide emissions. Or was this a natural effect of some other natural change, such as emerging from the Little Ice Age?
The article claims that N2O has 300 times the warming potential of CO2, presumably on a per-mole basis. If N2O concentrations increased from about 270 ppb pre-1850 to about 330 ppb now, the 60-ppb increase in N2O over 150-plus years would be equivalent to an increase of about 0.06 * 300 = 18 ppm CO2, which has occurred over the last 10 years. This means that on a per-year basis, the increase in N2O would have about 10 times less warming effect than the increase in CO2.
The article also fails to mention what wavelengths of light are absorbed by N2O, either in the infrared or visible or ultraviolet spectrum. It is quite possible that some of the wavelengths that are absorbed by N2O are also absorbed by water vapor, which would “mask” those wavelengths from any absorption effect by N2O.
It is also well-known that other nitrogen oxides, particularly NO and NO2, can react with volatile organic compounds and atmospheric oxygen in the presence of sunlight to produce tropospheric ozone, which has led EPA (and other environmental regulators worldwide) to limit emissions of NO and NO2 since the 1970’s.
Ozone is a strong absorber of ultraviolet rays, which is beneficial in the upper atmosphere but harmful in the lower atmosphere. Have the authors of this article considered the overall heat balance, not only of any radiation absorbed by N2O but also of any products of its reactions in the atmosphere?
Steve Z; I had similar thoughts about the absorption aspect when I read:
“Nitrous oxide is given off by the overuse of artificial fertilisers, and by organic sources such as animal manure, and has a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide.”
That had my sceptometer nudging over into the red. I strongly suspect that the measurements which gave this result were carried out in dry, laboratory conditions and probably without other GHGs present. The same thing gets repeated ad nauseam about methane.
Out of curiosity I looked at the absorption spectra for N2O alongside other GHGs. It has two main absorption spikes. One coincides almost exactly with that of methane. The other has a significant overlap with CO2 and with water vapour.
Methane concentrations are about 6 times higher than N2O; CO2 is about 1000 times higher and water vapour is a few million times higher.
So, in the real world, the warming effect of N2O is going to be half the cube root of….very little.
A while back someone came up with a good analogy of coverings on a bed. Water vapour is a top quality, arctic-rated duvet; CO2 is a thin blanket: CH4 is a light sheet; N2O is a tissue.
You have to remember that The Conversation is for researchers to put their work in the public eye. It is therefore supposed to be part educational and part PR/marketing. I h a t e it and stopped reading it when I realised that as a researcher you can just about make any old assertion you want without having to back it up with at least a citation.
I love this blog because all the people who know more atmospheric physics than I do fill in the gaps in The Con’s so called “Science”
Steve Z October 12, 2020 at 12:09 pm
From the graph accompanying this article, it appears that (according to Antarctic ice samples), N2O levels started increasing around the year 1850 (give or take a few decades).
Seems to correspond with the start of the use of guano from S America as a fertilizer
This just more elaborate hocus-pocus voodoo magic claims about how humanity must to turn over all control of our energy and food to those who claim to know how to save us from our folly and they’ll fix the weather. They wrap their claims in science sounding junk about how producing food with modern fertilizers is going to lead to humanity’s demise. Only our claimed “betters” know how to appease the angry climate gods in this pagan climate religion, and they demands our sacrifices be paid to them. Most of this kind of intellectuals are elitists who see 95% of humanity as Deplorables to be starved and put to their gas chambers when we get too numerous.
It’s quite clear humanity’s demise in the form of pan-genocide would be the result of following the directives to stop using mass produced nitrogen fertilizers. It would be a 21st Century result that would make Stalin’s kulak pogrom-induced starvation of 10’s of millions in the 1920’s-1930’s look like a warm-up session for population control.
This is truly frightening stuff if these humanity-hating, power hungry elitists are allowed near the levers of political power. Give them power like was given Stalin, Mao, Castro, the Nork’s Kim family, and Hugo Chavez to name a few, and the results will be the same on Western countries they control.
They claim to be our “betters” as all despotic authoritarians have claimed through history. It was only the Enlightenment that brought about freeing the human condition from despotism that produced the scientific and industrial revolution that brought humanity out of the short, harsh, brutish life the vast majority of humanity endured since civilizations became organized.
(note: I split this post up, because some kind of hosting filter is blocking certain phrases from being used in the comments.)
It’s quite clear humanity’s demise in the form of mass starvation would be the result of following the directives to stop using mass produced nitrogen fertilizers. It would be a 21st Century result that would make Stalin’s kulak pogrom-induced starvation of 10’s of millions in the 1920’s-1930’s look like a warm-up session for population control.
This is truly frightening stuff if these humanity-hating, power hungry elitists are allowed near the levers of political power. Give them power like was given Stalin, Mao, Castro, the Nork’s Kim family, and Hugo Chavez to name a few, and the results will be the same on Western countries they control.
They claim to be our “betters” as all despotic authoritarians have claimed through history. It was only the Enlightenment that brought about freeing the human condition from despotism and the rule of monarchs that produced the scientific and industrial revolution that brought humanity out of the short, harsh, brutish life the vast majority of humanity endured since civilizations became organized.
(note: I split up my comment to try and find out what phrase or sets of words is being blocked by the hosting site filters.)
“Pan-genocide” seems to be an offending word for the filters.
FYI:
“Pan- g e n o c i d e” seems to be an offending word for the auto-delete filters. (when properly spelled-out, without the spaces).
There’s a lot of drag racers that would love to take that nitrous off your hands and put it to good use.
Daniel, maybe if we fill the atmosphere with N2O ICE engines would be perked right up.
In the 50s , adults had a saying about Gov’t and taxes: “Someday they will try to tax the air we breathe”. And for over a decade they have been trting to do just that.
Earth is 70+% covered by water. WaterVapor’s greenhouse effect comprises 95+ % of all greenhouse gas effects. Extrapolating alarmists’ alarm history, they will eventually get around to this one: We must reduce Earth’s water, else we will all die! And they will try to tax water.
And nitrogen makes up 70% of our atmosphere so when the nitrogen tax comes in, well, they will be taxing the air we breathe.
“stabilise the earth’s climate”. Is it 1st April or are they are having a joke?
They are probably heavily sedated and laughing. This could be a good thing.
From: https://adf.org.au/drug-facts/nitrous-oxide/
Nitrous oxide – Alcohol and Drug Foundation
adf.org.au › drug-facts › nitrous-oxide
Nitrous oxide is a colourless gas that is commonly used for sedation and pain relief, but is also used by people to feel intoxicated or high.
No, many “intellectuals” actually believe that as their new pagan religion belief set, a cultural superstition promoted by the Agenda 21 crowd, now Agenda 2030 elitists in the UN, the EU, IMF, and even the Vatican. That’s why we must not let them have political power over us.
What do the killer gasses N2O and CO2 have in common? Oxygen! So we should be waging war against oxygen. No?
Steve, how can a molecule of anything absorb and emit 300 times as much energy as a CO2 molecule.
There are only so many photons to go around, so where does the energy come from.
It is time the question was asked.
How do they calculate it?
What do the killer gasses N2O and CO2 have in common? Oxygen! So we should be waging war against oxygen. No?
H2O also has oxygen. I think you’re on to something.
Absolutely it is horse puckey. Farmers have mechanized, computerized, satellitized, and GPSized out the wazoo just to cut off a few pennies.
Folks should know that N2O is not applied directly to fields! Anhydrous Ammonia is not cheap nor is the equipment to apply it. It’s running $400 $500 per ton.
Here is an article about nitrogen management. Farmers in the US are as interested in reducing their costs as anyone.
This is like “Ozone the Sequel”, whatever the change might be it will be the end of us!
The Ozone boys still get away with it, they told us in 1987 if we didn’t heal the ozone layer soon we will all die. Well the ozone layer has not healed, but I think we are still here!
Still not seen the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, just some unicorns on the horizon, a few flying pigs and a lot of red herrings swimming around.
Many governments already apply NOx charges (another word for taxes) to anything they can, air transport and hybrid vehicles inclusive.
Wait and see, EAM (Easy Money Matters).
Cancel EAM, use EMM, typo…. But, hell, acronym or not, easy money still matters.
Easy Ass Money. go with it.
*Big hearty laugh*
+ many many many
The Global Warming Potential (GWP)numbers that appear in all five IPPC reports is a classic example of how to “Baffle ’em with bullshit” The 300 multiplier says absolutely nothing about how much warming N20 is going to cause. It’s a dead certainty that doubling or by 2100 the amount of projected warming due to nitrous oxide would be a totally immeasurable next to nothing amount.
This link:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/combined/N2O.html
has graphs that show that N2O has increased about 35 ppb over the last 40 years. So over the next 80 years to 2100 maybe a little more than 70 ppb or 0.00007 ppm It follows that if CO2 increases by a similar amount from 400 ppm to 400.00007 ppm figure out how much that is going to increase the temperature, and then multiply that result by 300.
That’s how the GWP numbers are defined. Here’s a link to the IPCC’s first Assessment Report
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
Where table 3 Page XXI of the Executive summary says:
Global Warming Potentials The warming effect of an emission of 1kg of each gas relative to that of C02
If anyone finds a decent example or explanation paper of how climate scientists work out those GWP numbers, global warming potentials, please let me know. From excitation and re-emission by IR photons, their numbers seem to be based on “radiative efficiency” which is also quite elusive to find a description in published papers. Houghton just came up with tables of values for various gases for the IPCC, seemingly out of thin air. Yes many of the denizens of WUWT can calculate the energy of a photon and how many of them there are in a couple of watts of IR, and the reemission energy, and thus kinetic energy or temperature thereafter.
I think that is likely one of Mickey Mann’s “guesses”
DMac, thanks for the reply.
If anyone can show that Methane is on track for more than ~0.05°C of warming by 2100 it would be great if they put up a link. Nitrous Oxide is even less.
Did you know that:
An ant can lift 10, 20, or even 50 times its body weight?
A Piper Cub can fly 86 times as far on a gallon of gas than a 747 Jumbo jet?
Methane is 86 times more powerful than CO2 as trapping atmospheric heat?
All three are factual but meaningless statistics for pretty much the same reason.
My dear mother told me that President Roosevelt in one of his famous fireside chats said, ” So far this yeah we’ve produced twice as many B29 Bombers as we did last yeah.” She said my Dad “Blew a Fuse” because he knew only two were produced the year before.
I commented up thread.
How can they “trap more heat” than CO2, what does the molecule do, store 300 photons instead of 1?
The logic for these statements by passes me.
How do they arrive at the values?
Duh! 70ppb is 70/1000 = 0.07 ppm So it’s 400 ppm vs 400.07 ppm CO2. I hate making stupid errors
Shocking to see how the man in the original post picture is not wearing any face covering. Just imagine how even a simple cloth mask might have kept some viral micron sized particles he’s shedding from his nostrils from getting into the hopper. I shudder thinking about the horror for field microbes that were exposed in the subsequent super-spreader event.
Yes. Farmers need “scientists” and government bureaucrats telling them how to farm.
+1
N2O capture farming.
Wolf! Wolf! Wolf, wolf, wolf!!! (Why is no one listening?) WOLF!!!!!!
George Harrison’s “Taxman” song said everything you need to know about taxes.