Inverse oscillations methane and nitrous oxide

The release of the IPCC report on impacts for NZ has seen the usual suspects baying for blood from industry and farming as the instruments of the new “pestilence”. Farming especially has been selected for pillory in the stocks and fiscal punishment.

Statistic NZ has an interesting graph on ghg emissions from 1990-2000 .Agriculture emissions seem to trend downwards and indeed they do going from 43,314.72 Gg CO2 in 1990 to 41,984.54 in 2000.




New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions, although very small in an overall world context, have been steadily contributing to the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions seen since 1990. Between 1990 and 2000, methane emissions have been decreasing on average compared with 1990 levels but may now be stabilising at around 1998 levels. Nitrous oxide emissions have increased by 6.4 percent between 1990 and 2000.

NIWA has made trace gas measurements at Baring Head (on the South Coast of the North Island near Wellington) since 1973. When the wind blows from the South, Baring Head air has generally had a long trajectory over the ocean. Under such conditions measurements of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide represent mid-latitude Southern Hemisphere background values, since the sampled air has not been contaminated by sources on the New Zealand mainland. Baring Head is part of a global network of stations for determining trends in greenhouse gas concentrations.

As we see the oscillations here



The ocean is a significant source of the trace gases nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO), which influence the radiative and oxidative capacity of the atmosphere. On both regional and global scales the marine source of these climate reactive gases is related to nutrient availability and phytoplankton production, and consequently any shift in nutrient supply, whether natural or forced, may have profound implications for atmospheric chemistry and climate . Law and Ling (2002) reported that the decrease in radiative forcing resulting from carbon dioxide fixation and CO2 uptake may be subsequently offset by 6-12% by N2O production.

The oxidising capacity of the troposphere reflects the ability of the atmosphere to cleanse itself of man-made and natural compounds. It is primarily determined by the concentration of hydroxyl radicals (OH) which are formed mainly from the photo dissociation of ozone by UV radiation. The emission of trace gases containing nitrogen and halogen (Cl, Br, I) atoms from the biosphere into the atmosphere affects the oxidising capacity, both as a source of reactive radicals such as NO3, Cl and BrO, and as a result of their influence on the concentration of ozone. The alkyl nitrates are a reservoir species for NOx (=NO2 + NO). Photolysis of NO2 is the only known way of producing ozone in the troposphere, therefore the photochemical processes occurring in the lower atmosphere are critically dependent on the level of nitrogen oxides. As the alkyl nitrates are relatively long lived in the troposphere, they can act as a source of NOx in remote environments away from continental sources and so influence ozone concentrations on regional levels.



In general, the alkyl nitrates have a predominantly anthropogenic source, but during the 1990s, several authors invoked an oceanic source of the light alkyl nitrates (C1-C3) to explain the distributions seen over remote oceanic regions (Blake, 1999). Recent studies in the Atlantic and southern Ocean have confirmed a seawater source of methyl and ethyl nitrate eg(Chuck et al 2002), and their production mechanisms .

As we also know the geographic proximity position of NZ to the geodesic proton cutoffs for high energy particle events from both solar and cosmic sources and their precipitating mechanisms of nitric oxide, we can conclude the passing of command and control legislation (cap and trade) is only a mechanism for wealth distribution and has no climatic response that is scientifically measurable.