A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks
The increase of atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations over the past 150 years has contributed to stratospheric ozone depletion1 and climate change2. The quantitative understanding of natural and anthropogenic contributions to the steadily increasing atmospheric burden (2% decade-1) has not yet been fully investigated. Current inventories do not provide a full picture of N2O emissions and omit the interactive effects between nitrogen (N) additions and the biochemical processes that control N2O fluxes. Here we use bottom-up (BU: inventory, statistical extrapolation of flux measurements, process-based land and ocean modeling) and top-down (TD: atmospheric inversions) approaches to provide the most comprehensive quantification of global N2O sources and sinks resulting from 21 natural and human sectors during 19802016. Global N2O emissions were 17.0 (12.2–23.5) Tg N yr-1 (BU) and 16.9 (15.9–17.7) Tg N yr-1 (TD) in the recent decade (20072016). Global human-induced emissions, dominated by N additions to croplands, increased by 30% over the past four decades to 7.3 (4.211.4) Tg N yr-1. This increase was mainly responsible for the growth in the atmospheric burden. Our findings point to growing N2O emissions in emerging economies, particularly Brazil, China, and India. Analysis of process-based model estimates reveals an emerging N2O-climate feedback resulting from interactions between N additions and climate change. The current increase of global N2O emissions has already exceeded the growth trend of some of the highest emission scenarios3,4, underscoring the urgency to mitigate N2O emissions.
TIAN Hanqin;
XU Rongting;
CANADELL Josep G.;
THOMPSON R. L.;
WINIWARTER Wilfried;
SUNTHARALINGAM Parvadha;
DAVIDSON Eric;
CIAIS Philippe;
JACKSON Robert B.;
JANSSENS-MAENHOUT Greet;
PRATHER Michael;
REGNIER Pierre;
PAN Naiqing;
PAN Shufen;
PETERS Glen P.;
SHI Hao;
TUBIELLO Francesco;
ZAEHLE Soehnke;
ZHOU Feng;
ARNETH Almut;
BATTAGLIA Gianna;
BERTHET Sarah;
BOPP Laurent;
BOUWMAN Alexander F.;
BUITENHUIS Erik;
CHANG Jinfeng;
CHIPPERFIELD Martyn;
DANGAL Shree R.S.;
DLUGOKENCKY Edward;
ELKINS James;
EYRE Bradley D.;
FU B;
HALL Bradley;
ITO Akihiko;
JOOS Fortunat;
KRUMMEL P. B.;
LANDOLFI A.;
LARUELLE Goulven G.;
LAUERWALD Ronny;
LI Wei;
LIENERT Sebastian;
MAAVARA Taylor;
MACLEOD Michael;
MILLET Dylan B.;
OLIN Stefan;
PATRA Prabir;
PRINN R. G.;
RAYMOND P.;
RUIZ Daniel J.;
VAN DER WERF Guido R.;
VUICHARD Nicolas;
WANG Junjie;
WEISS Ray;
WELLS Kelley;
WILSON C.;
YANG Jia;
YAO Yuanzhi;
2020-12-10
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
JRC121668
0028-0836 (online),
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2780-0,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC121668,
10.1038/s41586-020-2780-0 (online),
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