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Nitrogen and Climate Change This Page Intentionally Left Blank Nitrogen and Climate Change an Explosive Story Nitrogen and Climate Change This page intentionally left blank Nitrogen and Climate Change An Explosive Story Dave Reay Professor of Carbon Management and Assistant Principal, Global Environment & Society, University of Edinburgh, UK © Dave Reay 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-137-28695-6 ISBN 978-1-137-28696-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-28696-3 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reay, Dave, 1972– Nitrogen and climate change : an explosive story / Dave Reay, Professor of Carbon Management and Assistant Principal, Global Environment & Society, University of Edinburgh, UK. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. 1. Nitrogen—Environmental aspects. 2. Climate change mitigation. 3. Nitrogen cycle. I. Title. TD885.5.N5R425 2015 551.51’12—dc23 2015002666 In memory of Phyllis, Frank and Bernard Hutchinson This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Table, Figures and Boxes viii Preface – Wonderstuff xi Acknowledgements xvii Introduction 1 1 A Brief History of Nitrogen 9 2 Nitrogen and the Anthropocene 27 3 Nitrous Oxide as a Driver of Climate Change 39 4 Nitrous Oxide Sources 49 5 Airborne Nitrogen and Climate Change 69 6 Terrestrial Nitrogen and Climate Change 85 7 Freshwater Nitrogen and Climate Change 103 8 Marine Nitrogen and Climate Change 125 9 Agricultural Nitrogen and Climate Change Mitigation 145 10 Nitrogen in Food and Climate Change Mitigation 159 11 Nitrogen and Biofuels 169 12 Nitrogen and Geoengineering 179 13 Nitrogen and Climate Change Adaptation 193 Conclusion 207 Recommended Reading 209 Index 211 List of Table, Figures and Boxes Table 4.1 Estimates of global anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions (Tg N y−1) from different sources for the 1990s and 2000 50 Figures I.1 Key interactions of nitrogen with the global greenhouse effect 3 I.2 The web of nitrogen and climate change interactions in our atmosphere 5 I.3 Key interactions of nitrogen and climate change in aquatic environments 6 I.4 Key interactions of nitrogen and climate change on land 7 1.1 The natural terrestrial nitrogen cycle 11 2.1 Human disturbance and the terrestrial nitrogen cycle 34 3.1 Nitrification 41 3.2 Denitrification 42 4.1 Nitrous oxide and the natural terrestrial nitrogen cycle 52 4.2 Nitrous oxide and the marine nitrogen cycle 54 4.3 Anthropogenic nitrous oxide and the terrestrial nitrogen cycle 56 5.1 The atmospheric nitrogen cycle 70 5.2 The web of nitrogen and climate change interactions in our atmosphere 77 5.3 Nitrogen oxides and ozone 79 5.4 NOx and ammonia in the greenhouse effect 81 6.1 The terrestrial nitrogen cycle 88 viii List of Table, Figures and Boxes ix 6.2 Nitrogen in the atmosphere and its deposition 90 6.3 Nitrogen deposition and the greenhouse effect 91 6.4 Key interactions of nitrogen and climate change on land 97 7.1 The freshwater nitrogen cycle 105 7.2 Key interactions of nitrogen and climate change in aquatic environments 108 8.1 The marine nitrogen cycle 127 8.2 Key interactions of nitrogen and climate change in marine environments 130 9.1 Anthropogenic terrestrial nitrogen cycle 147 12.1 Nitrogen and geoengineering 180 Boxes P.1 Rocket fuel xiii P.2 Nitrogen ‘bends’ xv 1.1 Nitrogen asphyxiation 16 1.2 Death rights 21 2.1 Explosive nitrogen 29 3.1 Nitrous oxide in medicine 40 3.2 Measuring nitrous oxide 44 4.1 Ice core nitrous oxide 51 4.2 Estimating nitrous oxide emissions 61 5.1 The evolution of smog 72 5.2 NOx as an urban ozone precursor 73 5.3 Urban heat islands 76 5.4 NOx and aviation’s climate impact 80 6.1 Nitrogen deposition 89 6.2 Nitrogen and acidification 98 7.1 The ‘leaky pipe’ 110 x List of Table, Figures and Boxes 7.2 Nitrogen and human health 113 7.3 Blue baby syndrome in adults 117 8.1 Fish kills and Pfiesteria 133 8.2 Toxic algae 134 10.1 Global convergence on a Japanese diet 161 10.2 Chicken dinners and nitrous oxide in the US 162 10.3 Milk waste avoidance and nitrous oxide 164 11.1 Corn ethanol and climate change 173 11.2 Sugar cane and nitrous oxide 174 12.1 Ocean nitrogen boom and bust 182 12.2 Nitrogen and surface albedo 188 13.1 Intercepting farm nitrogen loss 196 13.2 Canopy capture and ammonia 199 Preface – Wonderstuff The faces say it all. Tell people you work on climate change and they’ll have an opinion. They’ll comment on their memories of childhood weather, the price of oil and the hand-wringing convenience of air travel. Tell them you work on nitrogen and at best you’ll get a blank look, more often it’s a poorly disguised yawn. The very word ‘Nitrogen’ sounds flat, an echo of radio gardening programmes and the more mundane corners of the periodic table. Had history turned out differently, and its discoverer not literally lost his head, this forgettable geek of the elemental year book would instead go by the zippy name of Azote – the life-taker. Instead, we have nitrogen. Common as muck, most often lacking any smell, taste or colour, and the science writing equivalent of a sports book on golf club grips, there would seem little point in telling its story. But, just beneath this dull veneer lies the stunning truth about a world-changing substance. Scratch the surface of the global challenge that is climate change, peer further into the perfect storm of population growth, food shortages and water pollution, and it is the layered and interconnected threads of nitrogen that shine through. Running through life, death and decomposition, integral to our genes, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the climate impacts we face – it is a wonderstuff. *** Our high-school chemistry class was not sent wild with excitement the first time we heard about nitrogen. It was spring, and through the dark months of winter the stained and malodorous Mr Davies had dragged us on through the hinterlands of the periodic table. For hour after hour we scribbled down the key facts about hydrogen, helium and the rest and, if we were lucky, got to try out the peculiarities of these different elements in the lab. We had made hydrogen go ‘pop’ in a test tube, had been roundly disciplined for breathing in helium from balloons to make our voices squeak, and had burnt some coal to heat some water. For nitrogen though, there was to be no practical. What was there to do with this odourless, colourless and unreactive gas but just write down that it was as common as muck and didn’t do a whole lot. We had oxygen coming up the following week and the promise of setting things on fire, so for xi xii Preface now it was just a case of fidgeting in the clammy plastic chairs and hop- ing someone would fart to break the monotony. The key facts on nitrogen were dutifully regurgitated onto exam papers at the end of the year and that, as far as we were concerned, was pretty much that. My own plan was to be a marine biologist – to discover new species, walk the beaches of the world and dive to unexplored ocean depths. Never again would I have to recall where nitrogen came in the periodic table and all the things it didn’t do. I thought nitrogen didn’t matter. That it was irrelevant to the inten- sifying global challenges of water, food, energy and climate security, that the important things in my life – family, friends and a sustain- able future – had nothing to do with nitrogen. On every count, I was wrong. A life in nitrogen One of my earliest recollections is of a chill Guy Fawkes’s night at my grandparents’ house in Billingham in North East England. Taking turns with my brother to select the smooth, brightly coloured tubes from the box of fireworks that evening was a joy that burned into my memory as surely as the explosions of white stars left their after- glow behind my eyelids.
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