Earth’s complex systems interact between atmospheric, terrestrial, hydrological, cryological (ice and snow) and biological processes in feedback loops. Understanding their relationships is important for modeling their future impacts, particularly regarding climate change.
Gases are known to impact climate, with nitrous oxides being considered the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane. Nitric oxide can be derived from anthropogenic activities, such as power plants, vehicles, construction equipment and much more, but it is also found in lakes.
Generally, the nitric oxide in lakes has not been considered a major forcing factor in air quality or climate models compared to human sources, but new research reported in Nature Geoscience focused on remote lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (the intersection of central, south and east Asia) has challenged this understanding.
The Tibetan Plateau contains thousands of lakes and constitutes approximately half of the lake environments within China, and provides valuable water resources to over 2 billion people across China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These lakes tend to be in isolated regions with no outflows, creating alkaline (pH value of 9 to 12) and saline (concentrated with salts and other minerals) environments.
Researchers at the Laboratory for Climate and Ocean-Atmosphere Studies, Peking University, China, and their collaborators have used satellite observations of 135 lakes larger than 50 km2 (this size needed for efficient use of satellite data) to record total nitric oxide emissions of 1.9
