For years, experts have warned about the risks from one pollutant in particular—nitrous oxide—and yet there's been little global action on it. This colossal amount of nitrogen makes crops and pastures grow more abundantly. It’s the third most important greenhouse gas after CO₂ (which lasts up to thousands of years in the atmosphere) and methane. Agriculture is the main cause of the increasing concentrations, and is likely to remain so this century. In agriculture, nitrous oxide is emitted into the atmosphere when micro-organisms act on nitrogen introduced to the soil via synthetic fertilisers, legumes or animal urine and dung. This article was written by an international team of experts. Industrial Agriculture, an Extraction Industry Like Fossil Fuels, a Growing Driver of Climate Change, Vintners and Farmers Are Breathing Easier After the Demise of Proposition 15, a ‘Headache’ at Best, Luis Magaña Has Spent 20 Years Advocating for Farmworkers, But He’s Never Seen Anything Like This, In Maine, Many Voters Defied the Polls and Split Their Tickets, Trump's Interior Department Pressures Employees to Approve Seismic Testing in ANWR, Senate 2020: In Alaska, a Controversy Over an Embattled Mine Has Tightened the Race. The current concentrations are in line with a global average temperature increase of well above 3℃ this century. But the data collected in 2013—and published in a report in the journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics earlier this year—also showed that nitrous oxide was also being emitted from the permafrost, at roughly 12 times the rate previously assumed. Emissions from Africa and South America are dominated by emissions from livestock manure. Since it also has a shorter life span, reducing it could have a faster, significant impact on global warming. Increase in emissions from agriculture and waste have been offset by a decline in emissions from industry and fossil fuels. N₂O must be part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and there is already work being done. N₂O emissions from Australia have been stable over the past decade. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and it also depletes the ozone layer. Since the 1960s, fertilizer use has shot up globally, helping usher in the "Green Revolution," which fed millions around the world. Sabrina Shankman is a reporter for InsideClimate News focusing on the Arctic. Permafrost Is Warming Around the Globe, Study Shows. In the summer of 2013, a pilot flew a tiny plane low over thawing Arctic permafrost as part of a study to determine what climate-forcing pollutants were being emitted and how much. This was largely achieved through government policies to reduce pollution in waterways and drinking water, which encouraged more efficient fertiliser use. The reason: "It is intimately connected to food," said Ravi Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University who co-chaired a United Nations panel on stratospheric ozone from 2007 to 2015. Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or nitrous, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula N 2 O.At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, with a slight metallic scent and taste.At elevated temperatures, nitrous oxide is a powerful oxidiser similar to molecular oxygen. But nitrous oxide is so much a food production issue," Ravishankara said. The treatment of domestic wastewater can also generate nitrous oxide. Its potency and relatively long life make N2O a dangerous contributor to climate change. Nitrogen oxides can damage the ozone layer, which humans rely on to prevent most of the sun's ultraviolet radiation from reaching earth's surface. The use of nitrogen in synthetic fertilisers and manure is a key driver of this process. The majority of nitrous oxide comes from agriculture, including microbes in fertilized soils and animal manure. Agriculture caused almost 70% of global N₂O emissions in the decade to 2016. As such, it's hard to extrapolate what these findings could mean Arctic-wide. The primary way nitric oxide is produced in the body is through the process of converting Larginine (one of the 20 amino acids) into citrulline. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed scenarios for the future, outlining the different pathways the world could take on emission reduction by 2100.

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