Specific Challenges

According the IPCC's 5^th Assessment Report, atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800 000 years.

Trust in any international agreement under UNFCCC aimed at limiting global warming will depend on our ability to make accurate estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as provision of mitigation services allowing robust reporting and verification against independent data and analyses

It is therefore essential that we increase our capability to identify more accurately the stocks and fluxes of these important greenhouse gases and at the same time develop methods and technologies that will enable us within the next five to ten years to accurately estimate and also verify CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O emissions from key sources.

Scope

Actions should quantify more accurately the stocks and fluxes of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O in Europe at both regional and continental scales through improved descriptions of key processes and feedbacks, state-of-the art methodologies, models and tools and by exploiting observations from a wide range of monitoring networks (in-situ and satellite). Special attention should be given to independent verification of data reported in countries' greenhouse gas inventories and to the improvement of the methods/approaches currently used for estimating greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. national inventories, tracer transport inversion using atmospheric and oceanic measurements, land-use measurements and models). Proposals should aim to develop widely accepted and scientifically robust methodologies in order to decrease to acceptable levels uncertainties associated with emission estimates and better identify human-induced emissions.