Study: Ocean source of a greenhouse gas has been underestimated
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas that can contribute to climate change and damage the ozone layer. But its cycling in and out of ocean waters has remained poorly understood, making it difficult to predict how the gas might impact the climate. Now new research by MIT postdoc Andrew Babbin and three others has provided a way to quantify this cycle, in which N2O — commonly known as laughing gas — is rapidly formed and destroyed in oxygen-poor layers of seawater, and some of the gas is released into the air. The findings, based on computer analysis and sampling of ocean waters from different depths, are presented this week in the journal Science, and show that this source of atmospheric nitrous oxide has been drastically underestimated. Babbin, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the study’s lead author, says that while nitrogen and its compounds are...