Program - The 11th GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium

Agenda TG3: THE GEO CARBON AND GHG INITIATIVE

The Paris Agreement established a long-term goal of keeping the global average temperature well below 2 °C above the pre-industrial level by achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the second half of this century. To monitor and evaluate the impacts of climate change measures for implementing the Paris Agreement, accurate knowledge of emission trends and reliable GHG inventories are essential. Emission reporting from developing countries is particularly important.

There has been an increase in the number of observational platforms, such as satellites, aircraft, ships, and ground stations, for monitoring the concentrations of atmospheric GHGs and their surface fluxes. National and regional inventories of emissions have also been prepared at higher spatial and temporal resolutions. The reliability of evaluations of natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks has been improved in recent years by combining data regarding sources and sinks with advanced analysis systems such as "top-down" (with atmospheric observations and inverse modeling) and "flux upscaling" (with surface flux/emission network data and upscaling) methods. However, due to uncertainties in modelling tools, and limited observational data coverage, high uncertainty still remains in global or regional sources/sinks estimations, particularly for carbon dioxide (CO₂)

Asia, as one of the world’s largest GHG emitters, has a responsibility to play an important role to turn the goals of Paris Agreement into reality. Urgent needs in Earth observation are to harmonize the increasing number of platforms for monitoring GHGs in Asia–Oceania, and to reduce their source/sink estimation uncertainties. Estimating emissions based on Earth observations for GHGs has enormous potential for providing additional sources of information that can complement national inventories. In particular, monitoring emission from expanding megacities, intermittent emissions from agricultural fields and forest (peat) fires, and emissions from large-scale land-use change are essential future targets.

Relevant Asian institutions and agencies for GHG observation and analysis will cooperate to improve up-to-date analysis systems and data coverage in Asia–Oceania for better estimation of emission distributions with sufficient accuracy, and to provide the data and knowledge to stakeholders in time with such activities as the Global Stocktake Process under the Paris Agreement.

Co-Chairs:
Nobuko SAIGUSA (National Institute for Environmental Studies; NIES), Japan;
Yi LIU (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; IAP/CAS), China.

Day 1: Wednesday, 24 October

14:00-14:30	1. Opening GEO Carbon and GHG Initiative Session
	1) Introduction to the Session 2) “The GEO Carbon and GreenhHouse Gas Initiative” [through the internet], Han DOLMAN (Chair, GEO Carbon and GHG Initiative Steering Committee) The Netherlands	[PDF 340KB] [PDF 1.1MB]

14:30-15:50	2. Toward Domain-Overarching Carbon Cycle and GHGs Monitoring System: Atmosphere
	1) “What we have monitored from space by the decade-long GOSAT observation and how we improve by GOSAT-2”, Akihiko Kuze (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; JAXA), Japan	[PDF 2.5MB]
	2) “TanSat mission achievement and Chinese CO₂ fluxes inversion from satellite observations” Yi LIU (IAP/CAS), China	[PDF 2.7MB]
	3) “Characteristics of atmospheric greenhouse gases over Asia-Pacific region observed by CONTRAIL aircraft project” Toshinobu MACHIDA (NIES), Japan	[PDF 3.6MB]
	4) Discussion

15:50-16:10	Break

16:10-17:10	3. Toward Domain-Overarching Carbon Cycle and GHGs Monitoring System: Oceans and Coasts
	1) “Ocean carbon cycle observation in JAMSTEC”, Akihiko MURATA (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology; JAMSTEC), Japan	[PDF 5MB]
	2) “Impact of Land-Ocean-Atmosphere interaction on the biogeochemistry of coastal India: Recent changes and vulnerable regions”, V.V.S.S. SARMA (National Institute of Oceanography; CSIR-NIO), India	[PDF 5MB]
	3) Discussion