More Bad Good News: Nitrate Fertiliser is Cooling the Planet
6 hours ago Eric Worrall 6 Comments
Essay by Eric Worrall
“… The current findings therefore are no reason to gloss over the harmful effects, let alone see additional nitrogen input as a means of combating global warming. …”
JULY 24, 2024
Net effects of man-made nitrogen attenuate global warming, researchers find
by Eberhard Fritz, Max Planck Society
Nitrogen fertilizers and nitrogen oxides from fossil fuels are known for their environmental damage: they pollute the air and drinking water, lead to over-fertilization of water and land ecosystems, reduce biodiversity and damage the ozone layer.
As far as climate is concerned, however, they have a net cooling effect. This is the conclusion reached by an international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena in a comprehensive analysis. In it, the scientists take stock of the various climate effects of nitrogen compounds from agricultural and non-agricultural sources.
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Without man-made nitrogen input, the climate would have heated up even more
The international team, led by Sönke Zaehle and Cheng Gong from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, has now summarized the various warming and cooling effects, in a study which has been published in the journal Nature. They found that reactive nitrogen, which enters the Earth system through human activities, cools the climate by an amount of -0.34 watts per square meter—in climate research, this is referred to as a net negative radiative forcing.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/24/more-bad-good-news-nitrate-fertiliser-is-cooling-the-planet/
