Fertilizer The greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are produced during the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer. The effects can be combined into an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. The amount varies according to the efficiency of the process. The figure for the United Kingdom is over 2 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide equivalent for each kilogramme of ammonium nitrate. Nitrogen fertilizer can be converted by soil bacteria to nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Through the increasing use of nitrogen fertilizer, which was used at a rate of about 110 million tons (of N) per year in 2012, adding to the
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter be a strong indication that biological processes are involved. However, if methane is found in the presence of gases such as sulfur dioxide (), that would be an indication that the methane is a byproduct of geological processes. The nature of the methane source requires measurements of a suite of trace gases in order to characterise potential biochemical and geochemical processes at work. The orbiter has very high sensitivity to (at least) the following molecules and their isotopomers: water (), hydroperoxyl (), nitrogen dioxide (), nitrous oxide (), methane (), acetylene (), ethylene (), ethane (), formaldehyde (), hydrogen cyanide