Increased soil emissions of potent greenhouse gases under increased atmospheric CO2
Open accessAbstract
Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO(2)) can affect biotic and abiotic conditions in soil, such as microbial activity and water content. In turn, these changes might be expected to alter the production and consumption of the important greenhouse gases nitrous oxide (N(2)O) and methane (CH(4)) (refs 2, 3). However, studies on fluxes of N(2)O and CH(4) from soil under increased atmospheric CO(2) have not been quantitatively synthesized. Here we show, using meta-analysis, that increased CO(2) (ranging from 463 to 780 parts per million by volume) stimulates both N(2)O emissions from upland soils and CH(4) emissions from rice paddies and natural wetlands. Because enhanced greenhouse-gas emissions add to the radiative forcing of terrestrial ecosystems, these emissions are expected to negate at least 16.6 per cent of the climate change mitigation potential previously predicted from an increase in the terrestrial carbon sink under increased atmospheric CO(2) concentrations. Our results therefore suggest that the capacity of land ecosystems to slow climate warming has been overestimated.
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“Soil is the largest carbon (C) reservoir in the terrestrial biosphere containing three times as much C to depths of 1 m as the atmosphere (van Groenigen et al., 2011).”
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- Authors
- van Groenigen, K. J., Osenberg, C. W., & Hungate, B. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Florida (US)
- Northern Arizona University (US)
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2011-07
- Volume
- 475
- Issue
- 7355
- Pages
- 214-216
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2040684390
- Cited by
- 551
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 61 · 2024: 55 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 31 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 28
- FWCI
- 42.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Plant responses to elevated CO2
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Keywords
- soil methane emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, elevated CO2, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, terrestrial carbon sink, paddy fields, wetlands, upland soil, radiative forcing
- MeSH terms
- Atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide, Gases, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, Oryza, Soil, Greenhouse Effect, Ecosystem, Wetlands, Global Warming
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