Nitrous oxide increases the difficulty of temperature control, how humans respond to climate warming

【Hot attention of Chemical Machinery and Equipment Network ] Climate warming is the main environmental challenge currently facing.
In recent years, climate changes such as the average temperature repeatedly hitting new highs, the melting of glaciers at the poles, and the increase in weather have caused great threats to the ecosystem, human life and economic development.
In 2015, the "Paris Agreement" was passed, countries have strengthened their efforts to address climate change, and reducing carbon emissions has become the main way to slow down the rate of warming at this stage.
However, a recent study shows that simply reducing carbon emissions will not achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

 

On October 8, "Nature" magazine published a study on the impact of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions on climate change.
The paper pointed out that the growth rate of man-made nitrous oxide emissions is faster than all the predicted emission scenarios, which will cause the average temperature to rise by 3°C compared with the pre-industrial period, which is far higher than the goal of the Paris Agreement.

 

Nitrous oxide is an important greenhouse gas second only to carbon dioxide and methane.
Its warming effect is significant.
It is 298 times that of carbon dioxide on a 100-year scale and contributes about 6% to the greenhouse effect.
Moreover, after nitrous oxide rises to the stratosphere, it will react with ozone photochemically, destroying the ozone layer.
Since nitrous oxide is very harmful to the human living environment, it has become a hot research topic in environmental science as early as the last century.
However, in the face of climate warming, the work done by countries in controlling nitrous oxide emissions is far from enough.

 

　　About 70% of nitrous oxide emissions from anthropogenic sources come from agricultural activities, mainly from the application of chemical nitrogen fertilizers and organic fertilizers made from livestock and poultry manure.
Agricultural production is the basic guarantee for human survival and development.
With the increase of the population and the improvement of living standards, human demand for agricultural production is also increasing.
The application of nitrogen fertilizer is an unavoidable link in current agricultural production.
At present, the emission of nitrous oxide has become a major challenge in temperature control.
How to achieve emission reduction on the basis of ensuring agricultural production is an urgent problem that all major agricultural countries need to solve.
An effective measure is to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and improve the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use.
In addition, researchers also need to strengthen the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions from farmland.

 

　　Compared with the common nitrogen oxides in air pollution monitoring such as NO and NO2, the monitoring of nitrous oxide is more difficult.
The static box method is commonly used in farmland nitrous oxide monitoring in our country, that is, cover a sealed box on the ground surface, measure the change of N2O in a period of time in the box, and calculate according to the area of ​​the box mouth, box volume and time N2O emission rate.
Among them, the measurement of N2O concentration generally uses a gas phase with an electronic capture detector (ECD)Chromatograph .
On this basis, my country has also developed an automatic sampling and observation system for farmland methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which can complete the automatic collection, transportation and analysis of the gas in the sampling box.
However, compared with ordinary air pollutant monitoring, the monitoring of nitrous oxide is more complicated, and it can only be monitored in specific areas and cannot be applied on a large scale.

 

　　A huge amount of nitrous oxide is emitted every year.
In addition to soil, rivers, oceans, and industrial production also release large amounts of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.
Moreover, the research on the nitrogen cycle in the natural environment is not as deep as the carbon cycle.
Therefore, it is much more difficult to control nitrous oxide emissions than carbon dioxide and methane.
However, no matter how difficult it is, we must change from now on for the future of mankind.

 

　　Original title: Nitrous oxide increases the difficulty of temperature control, how humans respond to climate warming