Even before carbon dioxide, did we have a problem with nitrous oxide too?
1. Back in 1970, it was claimed that the excess nitrogen buildup (from the use of synthetic fertilizers, discharge of wastewater or from the combustion of fossil fuels) would make ‘all land unusable’ (by polluting land, water & air, while it will also exacerbate climate change and would deplete the ozone layer) – despite the fact that it makes the sky blue, forms the foundation of proteins in our bodies and helps make soils fertile. Whether nitrous oxide (released from the microbial reactions between ‘soil’ and ‘active nitrogen fertilizer’) is not 300 times more potent @ warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide?
Such released nitrogen won’t remain active in the atmosphere for more than 100 years?
It’s more than 50 years now. Whether ‘CO2 fever’ has suppressed excessive nitrogen emission for time being?
2. Back in 2004, nearly a couple of decades back, it was claimed that Britain will become Siberia by 2024. On the contrary, Heathrow Airport recorded 40.2 degree Celcius in July 2022. On the other hand, very recently, California appeared to be heading into a fourth year of devastating drought before back-to-back atmospheric rivers and a blast of arctic air dumped enormous amounts of rain and snow between late December and March, creating a huge Sierra Nevada snowpack.
For a layman, how reliable are these forecasts?
3. Have we successfully captured the multiple mechanisms associated with a ‘regional heating or cooling’ – associated with their spatial and temporal patterns of temperature change – with reference to ‘decadal oscillations of ocean temperature’?
4. Whether regional patterns of climate change has a positive correlation with the global mean temperature change?
Or, at least,
do we have a clarity on ‘the deterministic response to climate forcings (from that of unforced variability)’ from the observed regional climate change?
Have we frozen the timescale so far – over which we will be able to simulate and analyze regional changes of the past as El Nino and La Nina cycles have hardly impacted the last eight years only (and hence more reliable climate data must be measured over periods of decades)?
@ Suresh, I think so. In the decades since the 1987 Montreal Protocol led to the phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons, a once common ingredient in refrigerants and aerosols, nitrous oxide has also become the greatest human-related threat to the ozone layer that shields Earth against harmful ultraviolet radiation. Breathing nitrous oxide can cause dizziness, unconsciousness, and even death. Long-term exposure can lead to infertility. Contact with liquid nitrous oxide can cause severe frostbite. Workers may be harmed from exposure to nitrous oxide.
Dear Suresh, I suggest that you check the 'facts'. There would have 'always' been N2O emissions, but the accelerated release of stored C sources made us focus on other contributing sources, Paul.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Atmosphere