Assessing the contribution of soil NOx emissions to European atmospheric pollution

Summary

Atmospheric NO x concentrations are declining steadily due to successful abatement strategies predominantly targeting combustion sources. On the European continent, total NO x emissions fell by 55% between 1990 and 2017, but only modest reductions were achieved from the agricultural sector; with 7.8% from 20 Eastern European countries and 19.1% from 22 Western European countries. Consequently, the share of agricultural NO x emissions for these 42 European countries have increased from 3.6% to 7.2%. These values are highly uncertain due to serious lack of studies from agricultural soils and manure management. The emission factor (EF NO 1.33%), currently used for calculating soil NO x emissions from European agricultural categories 'N applied to soils' and 'manure management' was evaluated h