Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

N2O increasing faster than expected

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 909–910 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas for which global emission estimates, driven largely by fertilizer input, are highly uncertain. An inversion approach based on atmospheric measurements yields global increases more than twice as high as the IPCC default.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas produced by natural and human sources and is also the main contributor to the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer1. With a long atmospheric lifetime of at least 100 years and a global warming potential about 265–298 times as high as that of CO2, N2O has the potential to cause both short-term and long-lasting environmental problems. Agriculture is the main source of anthropogenic N2O emissions, primarily through the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers and manure on agricultural land1. As the global amount of fertilizer used is expected to increase considerably over the next few decades, it is essential to establish reliable inventories of N2O in order to define effective mitigation strategies. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Rona Thompson and colleagues2 present new global estimates of N2O emissions and show that this greenhouse gas has increased substantially since 2009, at a faster rate than expected. Their result questions one of the main methods currently used for the inventory of N2O emissions at the global scale.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Comparison of linear and nonlinear response of N2O emission to applied N.

References

  1. Ciais, P. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds. Stocker, T. F. et al.) 465–570 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

  2. Thompson, R. L. et al. Nat. Clim. Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0613-7 (2019).

  3. Davidson, E. A. & Knater, D. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 105012 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Griffis, T. J. et al. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 27, 746–754 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Philibert, A. et al. PLoS One 7, e50950 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. De Klein, C. et al. in 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Vol. 4 Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (eds. Eggleston, S. et al.) 11.1–11.54 (IPCC, 2006).

  7. Hoben, J. P. et al. Glob. Change Biol. 17, 1140–1152 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Shcherbak, I. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 9199–9204 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Gerber, J. S. et al. Glob. Change Biol. 22, 3383–3394 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), Paris, France

    David Makowski

Authors
  1. David Makowski
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Makowski.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Makowski, D. N2O increasing faster than expected. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 909–910 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0642-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0642-2

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing