Abstract
Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) can be both produced and reduced to dinitrogen (N 2 ) during microbial denitrification, with the balance between these steps controlling the net flux of this potent climate gas. Here, we first used a meta‐analysis of published studies to predict how warming may regulate N 2 O and N 2 production in soils and sediments. However, as most of these former studies used nitrate at far higher than ambient concentrations, the applicability of these predictions to ambient conditions may be limited. In addition, few studies separated denitrification from other microbial pathways contributing to N 2 O and N 2 production. To address these limitations, we used 15 N‐isotope labelling experiments in freshwater sediments to test how temperature sensitivity varies with limited (10 μM) and replete (100 μM) nitrate. Temperature affected N 2 O and N 2 production only when nitrate was replete, where N 2 production increased but net N 2 O production declined with warming, leading to a lower N 2 O:N 2 production ratio at higher temperatures. These results show that substrate availability can outweigh temperature in controlling the balance between N 2 O and N 2 production, indicating that temperature‐based predictions of N 2 O emissions alone may overestimate the effects of climate warming.