After carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas. Over a 100-year period, nitrous oxide has 273 times the potency of CO2
According to a recent report, the world's emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), which warms the planet, increased by 40 percent between 1980 and 2020. China was the biggest emitter, followed by India and the US.
In the past ten years, 74 percent of the nitrous oxide emissions have been attributed to agriculture using nitrogen fertilisers and animal dung, according to a study carried out by the Global Carbon Project, a network of climate scientists.
China, India, the US, Brazil, Russia, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, Turkey, and Canada are the top ten emitters, according to the report.
After carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas. Over a 100-year period, nitrous oxide has 273 times the potency of CO2.
In comparison to the average between 1850 and 1900, the Earth's average surface temperature has already increased by 1.15 degrees Celsius due to the increase in greenhouse gases. The warming caused by anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions is approximately 0.1 degrees.
25 percent more nitrous oxide was present in the atmosphere in 2022 than there was between 1850 and 1900 (336 parts per billion), far exceeding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections.
A study that was published in the journal Earth System Science Data states that agricultural emissions increased from 4.8 million metric tonnes in 1980 to 8 million metric tonnes in 2020, a 67 percent increase.
Scientists propose that by 2050, human activity-derived nitrous oxide emissions should have dropped by at least 20 percent from 2019 levels in order to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, as mandated by the Paris Agreement.
Hanqin Tian, the Boston College Schiller Institute Professor of Global Sustainability and the report's lead author, stated that reducing nitrous oxide emissions from human activity is necessary to keep the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius.
He stated, "Since there are currently no technologies to remove it from the atmosphere, reducing nitrous oxide emissions is the only solution."
60 million metric tonnes of commercial nitrogen fertilisers were applied by farmers in 1980. The amount used had grown to 107 million metric tonnes by 2020. In 2020, the total amount used was 208 million metric tonnes, of which 101 million metric tonnes came from animal manure.
The scientists also noted that the planet is seriously threatened by the ongoing increase of a greenhouse gas that has a potential for about 300 times more global warming than carbon dioxide.