Abstract
We computed high-resolution (1o latitude × 1o longitude) seasonal and annual nitrous oxide (N2O) concentration fields for the Arabian Sea surface layer using a database containing more than 2400 values measured between December 1977 and July 1997. N2O concentrations are highest during the southwest (SW) monsoon along the southern Indian continental shelf. Annual emissions range from 0.33 to 0.70 Tg N2O and are dominated by fluxes from coastal regions during the SW and northeast monsoons. However, the tendency to focus on measurements in locally restricted features in combination with insufficient seasonal data coverage leads to considerable uncertainties of the concentration fields and thus in the flux estimates, especially in the coastal zones of the northern and eastern Arabian Sea.