Two new ESSD articles evaluate in detail the greenhouse gas emissions across the European domain
28 May 2021
Earth System Science Data (ESSD) announces the publication of two greenhouse gas synthesis papers built on results from the VERIFY project (Petrescu et al., 2020) (https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/961/2020/). The two new papers evaluate in detail the greenhouse gas emissions across the European domain. More than 20 research institutions from 14 European countries compiled, quantified, and assessed a 1990–2018 time series of greenhouse gas estimates (CO2, CH4, and N2O) from all sectors that reported to the UNFCCC, as well as emissions obtained from atmospheric observations (top-down inversions). In sharing this new integrated recent-emission inventory data, process-based ecosystem model results, data-driven sector model results, and inverse modelling estimates, they call attention to large differences between bottom-up and top-down results, particularly for CO2. For CH4 and N2O, bottom-up estimates agree better with inversions based on atmospheric observations. An important issue hampering comparison is the lack of shared guidelines on estimating uncertainties of individual spatially disaggregated research datasets of emissions, while national greenhouse gas inventories include uncertainty estimates. As the EU already approved its 2030–2050 reduction targets, reducing these uncertainties will prove to be challenging. However, this is badly needed to accurately estimate the greenhouse gas emissions and removals as an aid for decision-making by policy makers at the national and European levels and to contribute to the international effort on greenhouse gas monitoring. These syntheses will be regularly updated. Through the open-data policies of ESSD, readers and users have full and free access to accurate emissions information.
Contact: Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu (a.m.r.petrescu@vu.nl)
