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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open
Journal article
Warming and redistribution of nitrogen inputs drive an increase in terrestrial nitrous oxide emission factor
Nature Communications, Vol.13(1), pp.1-16
2022
PMCID: PMC9314393
PMID: 35879348
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Source: InCites
Abstract
Anthropogenic nitrogen inputs cause major negative environmental impacts, including emissions of the important greenhouse gas N2O. Despite their importance, shifts in terrestrial N loss pathways driven by global change are highly uncertain. Here we present a coupled soil-atmosphere isotope model (IsoTONE) to quantify terrestrial N losses and N2O emission factors from 1850-2020. We find that N inputs from atmospheric deposition caused 51% of anthropogenic N2O emissions from soils in 2020. The mean effective global emission factor for N2O was 4.3 ± 0.3% in 2020 (weighted by N inputs), much higher than the surface area-weighted mean (1.1 ± 0.1%). Climate change and spatial redistribution of fertilisation N inputs have driven an increase in global emission factor over the past century, which accounts for 18% of the anthropogenic soil flux in 2020. Predicted increases in fertilisation in emerging economies will accelerate N2O-driven climate warming in coming decades, unless targeted mitigation measures are introduced.
Details
- Title
- Warming and redistribution of nitrogen inputs drive an increase in terrestrial nitrous oxide emission factor
- Creators
- E. Harris - Swiss Data Science CenterL. Yu - Institute of Environment and Ecology, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School (SIGS), Tsinghua UniversityY-P. Wang - CSIRO Oceans and AtmosphereJ. Mohn - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and TechnologyS. Henne - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and TechnologyE. Bai - Northeast Normal UniversityM. Barthel - Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH ZurichM. Bauters - Isotope Bioscience Laboratory - ISOFYS, Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent UniversityP. Boeckx - Isotope Bioscience Laboratory - ISOFYS, Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent UniversityC. Dorich - Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State UniversityM. Farrell - CSIROP. B. Krummel - CSIRO Oceans and AtmosphereZ. M. Loh - Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and AtmosphereM. Reichstein - Max Planck Institute for BiogeochemistryJ. Six - Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH ZurichM. Steinbacher - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and TechnologyN. S. Wells - Southern Cross UniversityM. Bahn - University of InnsbruckP. Rayner - School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Melbourne
- Publication Details
- Nature Communications, Vol.13(1), pp.1-16
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Grant note
- This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) project P31132 ‘NitroTrace: Using isotopes to trace the effects of climate extremes on N2O emissions and the nitrogen cycle in managed grasslands’ and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) project 163075 ‘Assessment of the global N2O budget based on seasonal and long-term isotope measurements at Jungfraujoch and the Cape Grim Air Archive’. An OECD Cooperative Research Program for Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems (OECD-CRP) grant for the project ‘Identifying drivers of N2O emissions in a changing climate’ supported Eliza Harris’ research stay at the University of Melbourne to carry out this work. Longfei Yu was supported by the EMPAPOSTDOCS-II program, which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement number 754364. The inverse modelling results were provided by R. L. Thompson who was funded through the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/), implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission, and were generated using computing resources from LSCE.
- Identifiers
- 991013039994902368
- Copyright
- Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2022
- Academic Unit
- School of Environment, Science and Engineering; Faculty of Business, Law and Arts; Faculty of Science and Engineering; Science
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article