Fertilizer use responsible for increase in nitrous oxide in atmosphere

Chemists have analyzed the isotopic composition of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse and ozone-destroying gas - in air samples from as far back as 1940 and found the fingerprint of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This fingerprint proves definitively that the 20 percent increase in atmospheric nitrogen since the Industrial Revolution is largely due to the Green Revolution, when use of synthetic fertilizers ramped up.

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