Enhanced nitrous oxide emissions found in field warming experiment in the Arctic

[NickB79]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161121165458.htm

The Arctic is warming rapidly, with projected temperature increases larger than anywhere else in the world. The Arctic regions are particularly important with respect to climate change, as permafrost soils store huge amounts of the Earth's soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Warming of arctic soils and thawing of permafrost thus can have substantial consequences for the global climate, as the large C and N stores could be released to the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The release of these heat-trapping gases, in turn, has the potential to further enhance climate warming.

The impact of warming on the release of CO2 and CH4 is currently a hot topic in numerous studies carried out in the Arctic. Previous research of the Biogeochemistry research group at the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, has shown, however, that arctic soils are further a relevant source of the strong greenhouse gas N2O -- nearly 300 times more powerful than CO2 in warming the climate. The relevance of this finding, and a potentially even larger N2O release in a warming Arctic, is now being addressed by researchers of the same research group. These results are recently published in Global Change Biology.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about from the Clathrate Gun hypothesis and methane releases.