Wednesday 4 January 2012

Nitrogen pollutants in the oceans: The impact on the atmosphere

As my research for the blog continues, I’m finding that the role of nitrogen in the world’s oceans is more important than I had imagined, and anthropogenic changes to the ocean’s nitrogen cycle can have far reaching effects, many of which are uncertain but potentially significant.

The paper that I want to draw attention to today is by Duce et al. and was published in Science in 2008.  The paper is an interesting one as it highlights the impact that atmospheric anthropogenic reactive nitrogen being dissolved in the open ocean has on the ability of the ocean to act as both a source and a sink for greenhouse gasses.

According to the research, this anthropogenic disturbance could cause around 3% of annual increase in new ocean biological production.  This causes a removal of CO2 from the atmosphere as the marine carbon that is used to create new life must remain in constant equilibrium with the carbon in the atmosphere.  However, this greenhouse gas reduction is less significant when the possible increase in nitrous oxide is considered.  Duce et al. state that as much as an extra 1.6 teragrams of nitrous oxide (N2O) could be produced as a result of the increased reactive nitrogen availability, accounting for around 2/3 of the reduction in radiative forcing achieved by the extra carbon sequestration.

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