High natural nitric oxide emissions from lakes on Tibetan Plateau under rapid warming

Nitrogen oxides affect health and climate. Their emissions, in the form of nitric oxide, from inland waters such as lakes are generally considered negligible absent air quality climate models. Here we find unexpected high emissions oxide remote on Tibetan Plateau, based satellite observations tropospheric nitrogen dioxide vertical column densities subsequent emission inversion at a fine resolution 5 km. The total 135 larger than 50 km2 reach 1.9 metric tons N h−1, comparable to anthropogenic individual megacities worldwide or Tibet Autonomous Region. On average, per unit area 63.4 μg m−2 exceeding those crop fields. Such strong natural have not been reported, best our knowledge. derived microbial processes association with substantial warming melting glacier permafrost plateau, constituting previously unknown feedback between climate, lake ecology emissions. High-resolution reveal that large Plateau worldwide.