Study Of Greenland Nitrous Oxide Release Finds 20X Levels Of Earlier Main Source, Tropical Forests

[hatrack]

Oops.

The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas. "Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range," the study said.

The scientists, from Denmark and Norway, studied sites in Canada and Svalbard off northern Norway alongside their main focus on Zackenberg. The releases would be a small addition to known impacts of global warming. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas from human activities, dominated by carbon dioxide ahead of methane.

It is among the gases regulated by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for limiting global warming that could spur more sandstorms, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. Nitrous oxide comes from human sources including agriculture, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, and use of fossil fuels as well as natural sources in soil and water, such as microbes in wet tropical forests.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63311Z20100404

[pscot]

1. Great news for painless dentistry

For the rest of us, not so much.

[NNadir]

2. These days, a large fraction of the proteinaceous mass on earth is derived from Haber process

fixed nitrogen.

Historically tropical forests may have dominated, but not now.

The chief sink for N₂O is what it has always been, radiation, with a small amount consumed by combustion processes, since N₂O will support combustion at a high enough temperature and is, a mild oxidant.