N fluxes from the agricultural sector

Citation

Pattey, E., Desjardins, R.L., Murphy, J., MacDonald, D., Mesbah, M., 2016. N fluxes from the agricultural sector.WMO- GLOBAL ATMOSPHERE WATCH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON NITROGEN CYCLE York 13-14 Apr 2016. Invited Talk

Plain language summary

The World Meteorological Organisation Global Atmospheric Watch (WMO GAW) International workshop on Nitrogen Cycle, was held at the University of York, York, UK, 13-14 April 2016. There were 25 participants.
The presentations included discussion of the GAW focus on “Research Enabling Services”, with the theme that “Atmospheric Composition Matters” to human health, weather forecasting, climate, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, agricultural productivity, aeronautical operations, renewable energy production, and more. Nitrogen cycle research is one of the new cross-cutting activities in GAW that enables ecosystem services in particular. There were presentations on GAW Focal areas including Aerosols, Greenhouse gases, Reactive gases and Total atmospheric deposition. See http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/gaw_home_en.html
The broader Nitrogen cycle research and observational community was also present at the meeting. These included participants from the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN) of the Convention on Long-Range Transport of Air Pollution (LRTAP), the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS), agricultural, metrological and effects communities. Discussion was about the facts that globally and regionally nitrogen is a key environmental constituent that can have deleterious effects on air and water quality, climate change, ecosystems and soil quality while simultaneously being the key to global food production. This tension between food production and environmental degradation is a key scientific and policy issue of today. The key issue is how to globally increase the “nitrogen use efficiency”. See http://www.inms.international/
A focus of this workshop was on how WMO/GAW can ensure that GAW products contribute to the broader Nitrogen cycle agenda and in particular how the mutual beneficial links can be established with the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS) initiative. The two pathways are through observations and modelling.
The Workshop identified that integration of GAW nitrogen measurement activities (both reactive nitrogen compounds and nitrous oxide) within Nitrogen cycle studies is an essential and currently incomplete contribution to the GAW goal of “Research enabling Services”. This work is more advanced in GAW with respect to the carbon containing gases and the Carbon cycle. The Workshop recommended that closer ties be developed between the GAW nitrogen community and both the users of global and regional emissions inventories (e.g. GEIA and UNFCCC) and the users of global and regional chemical transport models that include reactive gases, aerosol and deposition. This has the potential, through model-measurement-fusion (MMF), to contribute to the improvement of knowledge of the regional and global atmospheric cycles of fixed nitrogen. It was also recommended that inverse modelling techniques to infer fluxes are much broader utilized in GAW. The results of such modelling can provide useful insights on the Nitrogen fluxes as a top-down approach to emission estimates and it can be useful in support of policy making. The workshop also recommended to improve the density of N related observations in rural /agricultural areas which is critical for high quality flux inversion.

Abstract

The World Meteorological Organisation Global Atmospheric Watch (WMO GAW) International workshop on Nitrogen Cycle, was held at the University of York, York, UK, 13-14 April 2016. There were 25 participants.
The presentations included discussion of the GAW focus on “Research Enabling Services”, with the theme that “Atmospheric Composition Matters” to human health, weather forecasting, climate, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, agricultural productivity, aeronautical operations, renewable energy production, and more. Nitrogen cycle research is one of the new cross-cutting activities in GAW that enables ecosystem services in particular. There were presentations on GAW Focal areas including Aerosols, Greenhouse gases, Reactive gases and Total atmospheric deposition. See http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/gaw_home_en.html
The broader Nitrogen cycle research and observational community was also present at the meeting. These included participants from the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN) of the Convention on Long-Range Transport of Air Pollution (LRTAP), the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS), agricultural, metrological and effects communities. Discussion was about the facts that globally and regionally nitrogen is a key environmental constituent that can have deleterious effects on air and water quality, climate change, ecosystems and soil quality while simultaneously being the key to global food production. This tension between food production and environmental degradation is a key scientific and policy issue of today. The key issue is how to globally increase the “nitrogen use efficiency”. See http://www.inms.international/
A focus of this workshop was on how WMO/GAW can ensure that GAW products contribute to the broader Nitrogen cycle agenda and in particular how the mutual beneficial links can be established with the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS) initiative. The two pathways are through observations and modelling.
The Workshop identified that integration of GAW nitrogen measurement activities (both reactive nitrogen compounds and nitrous oxide) within Nitrogen cycle studies is an essential and currently incomplete contribution to the GAW goal of “Research enabling Services”. This work is more advanced in GAW with respect to the carbon containing gases and the Carbon cycle. The Workshop recommended that closer ties be developed between the GAW nitrogen community and both the users of global and regional emissions inventories (e.g. GEIA and UNFCCC) and the users of global and regional chemical transport models that include reactive gases, aerosol and deposition. This has the potential, through model-measurement-fusion (MMF), to contribute to the improvement of knowledge of the regional and global atmospheric cycles of fixed nitrogen. It was also recommended that inverse modelling techniques to infer fluxes are much broader utilized in GAW. The results of such modelling can provide useful insights on the Nitrogen fluxes as a top-down approach to emission estimates and it can be useful in support of policy making. The workshop also recommended to improve the density of N related observations in rural /agricultural areas which is critical for high quality flux inversion.