Agricultural soils contribute globally over two-thirds of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Approximately 36% of annual N2O emissions in temperate climates occur during a period of snow melt and soil thaw. Continuous long-term observations including this thaw period, however, are not common, making it difficult to assess drivers and quantify variability. In this study, we report on 20 years (2002-2022) of micrometeorological N2O flux data from a crop-rotation in Ottawa, Ontario. Observations are further supplemented by DNDCv.CAN model outputs for comparative purposes. Model performance across all 20 years was good (d = 0.75), while the model also performed well during spring across all years (d = 0.76). There was good agreement with observed data in terms of seasonal distribution of events, although alignment at the daily scale was not as strong. Regression showed little to no correlation between observed N2O and common environmental drivers, although the response of non-growing season cumulative N2O emissions to cumulative freezing degree-days is consistent with Wagner-Riddle et al. (2017). However, focusing only on freezing degree-days may cause other possible controls to be neglected. These results suggest that current empirical and process-based approaches broadly capture the relationships between N2O fluxes and environmental drivers across larger temporal scales (i.e., monthly, seasonally, annual), however additional knowledge is required to improve assessments at finer time scales. Improving our understanding of soil processes and environmental drivers related to N2O emissions should reduce model uncertainty, improve current quantification approaches, and ultimately reduce agricultural-related emissions.