This is getting serious. Climate change could cause forests in Europe to spew out more and more nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas, a potent contributor to global warming.
As a greenhouse gas, N2O is 296 times as powerful as carbon dioxide and accounts for 6 per cent of the greenhouse effect. To better understand the N2O output from forests, Klaus Butterbach-Bahl of the Karlsruhe Research Centre in Germany and team members Per Ambus and Sophie Zechmeister-Boltenstern studied N2O emissions from 11 European forests (Biogeosciences, vol 3, p 135).
They found that nitrifying soil…
