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Global estimates of soil nitrate leaching of applied nitrogen (N) in agricultural production systems are not imprecise; however, the results of some field experiments have suggested that nitrate leaching responds exponentially rather than linearly to increasing N inputs. In this study, we compiled field data on nitrate leaching for 324 site-year combinations extracted from 86 peer-reviewed articles to test the hypothesis that in response to N fertilizer addition, soil nitrate leaching emission factors (EF) do not remain constant, but rather increase rapidly with increasing rates of N application. The averaged overall results showed that the proportional change in the EF response to increasing N input (Delta EF, %) was 0.042. Because this value was positive and significantly different from zero, our results demonstrate that EF is not constant, but rather increases with N addition. We compared our Delta EF response pattern with other constant EF patterns, and found chat the 30% ET estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 19% EF used in another published model were too high. A global estimate of soil nitrate leaching in arable uplands calculated with our Delta EF pattern was substantially lower than other estimates calculated with other procedures. In conclusion, our Delta EF pattern provided a globally applicable procedure for more accurate estimation of leaching loss and potential environmental costs incurred by various N application gradients. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.