On the pathway to new greenhouse gas monitoring systems

Abstract

The side event shall tackle key questions related to the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets as - What can and will deliver a GHG observation system? - How can it contribute to future carbon inventory systems? - What is needed for an operational observation system? A coordinated field campaign including various national, internationalwill be presented. It was carried out in spring 2018 with its main focus on one of the major European hot spots in methane emissions, the Upper Silesian Coal Basin in Poland. The goal of the campaign was to combine a suite of state-of-the art remote sensing and in-situ instruments on several aircrafts and on ground to provide regional-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) data. Coordination of airborne and ground-based measurements overflights of the Japanese GOSAT and European Sentinel-5P satellites shall contribute to validate and assess the data quality of the GHG data from satellites for a scene of high complexity. Such approaches will advance the utilization of satellite data to constrain bottom-up GHG inventories from national reporting with independent information including from modelling and will thus support the accuracy of national GHG emissions reporting. Taking stock of the campaign results, the benefit of new measurement techniques and instruments shall be discussed with emphasis to operational observation systems sharing the view of scientists, experts from space agencies, and different stakeholders. These new techniques will fill existing gaps and support countries to evaluate their NDCs towards raising their ambition to reduce GHG emissions. The scientific exploitation of the campaign data is supported by BMBF within its AIRSPACE project.