Oops! Nitrous Oxide Releases From Permafrost 12X Higher Than Thought; Gas 300X As Powerful As CO2
EDIT
In a 2010 paper, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rated permafrost nitrous oxide emissions as “negligible,” and few studies counter this claim.
But a paper published this month in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics shows that nitrous oxide emissions from thawing Alaskan permafrost are about 12 times higher than previously assumed. Since N2O traps heat nearly 300 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide does, this revelation could mean that the Arctic — and the global climate — are in more danger than we thought. “Much smaller increases in nitrous oxide would entail the same kind of climate change that a large plume of CO2 would cause,” said Wilkerson, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences based in the lab of James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at Harvard.
In August 2013, before Wilkerson joined the Anderson lab, members of the lab and scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) traveled to the North Slope region of Alaska, bringing with them a specially outfitted small plane that collected data on four greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide — that are naturally released from soil and water as part of microbial processes. Flying low, the airborne laboratory collected the gases over nearly 200 square miles, an area about four times the size of Boston proper. Using the eddy covariance technique, which measures vertical wind speed and the concentration of trace gases in the atmosphere, the team could determine whether more gases rose or fell.
In this case, what goes up does not always come down: Greenhouse gases rise into the atmosphere, where they trap heat and warm the planet. And nitrous oxide poses an even greater threat: In the stratosphere, sunlight and oxygen team up to convert the gas into reactive nitrogen oxides that eat away at the ozone layer, which absorbs most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. According to the EPA, atmospheric levels of the gas are rising overall, and the molecules can stay in the atmosphere for up to 114 years.
EDIT
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/06/warming-arctic-permafrost-releasing-12-times-more-nitrous-oxide-a-potent-greenhouse-gas-than-previously-thought-this-needs-to-be-taken-more-seriously-than-it-is-right-now.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
