Inventories and scenarios of nitrous oxide emissions
By Eric Davidson, D. Kanter. 2014
328 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Effective mitigation for N2O emissions, now the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas and the largest remaining anthropogenic source of stratospheric ozone depleting substances, requires understanding of the sources and how they may increase this century. Here we update estimates and their uncertainties for current anthropogenic and natural N2O emissions and for emissions scenarios to 2050. Although major uncertainties remain, ‘bottom-up’ inventories and ‘top-down’ atmospheric modeling yield estimates that are in broad agreement. Global natural N2O emissions are most likely between 10 and 12 Tg N2O-N yr−1. Net anthropogenic N2O emissions are now about 5.3 Tg N2O-N yr−1. Gross anthropogenic emissions by sector are 66% from agriculture, 15% from energy and transport sectors, 11% from biomass burning, and 8% from other sources. A decrease in natural emissions from tropical soils due to deforestation reduces gross anthropogenic emissions by about 14%. Business-as-usual emission scenarios project almost a doubling of anthropogenic N2O emissions by 2050. In contrast, concerted mitigation scenarios project an average decline of 22% relative to 2005, which would lead to a near stabilization of atmospheric concentration of N2O at about 350 ppb. The impact of growing demand for biofuels on future projections of N2O emissions is highly uncertain; N2O emissions from second and third generation biofuels could remain trivial or could become the most significant source to date. It will not be possible to completely eliminate anthropogenic N2O emissions from agriculture, but better matching of crop N needs and N supply offers significant opportunities for emission reductions.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08669d5e4495d1564e39c64c8afdb8de4f87038e
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Citations in the corpus
- The Global N2O Model Intercomparison Project (2018, background): “, 2012); 4) N2O 281 fluxes from other than terrestrial ecosystem sources to allow for a global budget (industrial, 282 combustion, waste water & water bodies, marine and oceanic sources) (e.g., Battaglia and Joos, 283 in press; Davidson and Kanter, 2014; Galloway et al., 2004; Fowler et al., 2013; W”
- Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters (2018, background): “Eliminating excess and inefficiently applied fertilizer can reduce costs to farmers (128) and emissions of N2O (129) and may decrease nitrogen loads to waterways.”