In this video, SÖNKE ZAEHLE explores how human-induced nitrogen inputs affect the Earth’s climate system. Using an integrated modeling approach, his team assessed how nitrogen from agriculture and fossil fuel combustion influences greenhouse gases, aerosols, and radiative forcing. Their findings show that nitrogen both cools and warms the planet—through carbon storage and N₂O emissions, respectively—while also altering short-lived climate forcers like methane and ozone. ZAEHLE warns that cleaning up nitrogen pollution could unintentionally reduce this cooling, requiring greater efforts to meet climate targets.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101206
Researcher
Sönke Zaehle is Director of the Department of Biogeochemical Signals at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and Honorary Professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. His research focuses on the interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and the climate system, integrating ecological data and remote sensing with large-scale biosphere modeling. Zaehle leads the development of the QUINCY model and contributes to projects on nutrient-carbon-climate feedbacks such as TRENDY, 4C, and ESA’s Land-Carbon-Constellation. He is a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and serves as Associate Editor for "Biogeosciences" and advisor to "New Phytologist".
Institution
The research is dedicated to the study of global biogeochemical cycles and their long-term interactions with the biosphere, the atmosphere, the geosphere and the entire climate system. We want to better understand how living organisms - including humans - exchange basic resources such as water, carbon, nitrogen and energy with their environment and how this affects global climate and ecosystems. Biogeochemistry is the science of the Earth's metabolism. Elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus are constantly undergoing biological, chemical and physical transformations as they are exchanged between different parts of the Earth, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. The "biogeochemical cycles" quantitatively describe the distribution and exchange of elements between these components of the Earth system.
Original publication
Global net climate effects of anthropogenic reactive nitrogen
Cheng Gong, Hanqin Tian, Hong Liao, Naiqing Pan, Shufen Pan, Akihiko Ito, Atul K. Jain, Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, Fortunat Joos, Qing Sun, Hao Shi, Nicolas Vuichard , Qing Zhu et al
Nature
Published in 2024
