Nitrous Oxide as a Driver of Climate Change

Abstract

Nitrous oxide represents nitrogen’s most direct driver of global climate change. Commonly known as laughing gas, this relatively inert gas was first described by Joseph Priestley in 1772 (Box 3.1), and it has since become a stock anaesthetic and analgesic for doctors, midwives and dentists everywhere1. Alongside the enlightenment boom in the use of nitrous oxide for medicine and recreation, its concentration in the atmosphere also began to rise. The source of this increase lay not in the labs of chemists or the drawing rooms of giggling London aristocrats, but in the rapid expansion of agriculture and industrialisation occurring around the world.