Progress with implementation of the Integrated
Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS)
and New Zealand pilot project
Gordon Brailsford1, Oksana Tarasova2,
1National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) New Zealand
2WMO Research Department

Gordon.Brailsford@niwa.co.nz

9th GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium, Tokyo, 11th-13th January 2017

Integrated Global GHG Information System (IG3IS)- Evidence Based Policy Support and Evaluation
Phil DeCola
Sigma Space
Oksana Tarasova
WMO GAW
Riley Duren
NASA JPL
Kevin Gurney
Arizona State University
Jacqueline McGlade
Valentin Foltescu
UNEP

and the IG3IS Planning TeamJohn Burrows, Jane Burston, James Butler,Tony Janetos, Vincent-Henri Peuch, Pep Canadell, PhilippeCiais, Sander Houweling, Alistair Manning, Peter Rayner, Steve Wofsy, Christoph Gerbig, Beverly Law,Kevin Gurney, David Schimel, Felix Vogel,Jae Edmonds, John Miller, Riley Duren, Prabir Patra, ShuangxiFang, Luciana Gatti, Tim Arnold, Luisa Molina, Toshinobu Machida, Ed Dlugokencky, Diane Stanitski, Deon
Terblanche, James Whetstone, Jack Kaye, Hratch Semerjian, Steven Hamburg, Stephan Reimann,
Daniel Zavala-Araiza, Dominik Brunner and others community effort!

Paris Agreement – limit the warming below 2°C(by limiting emissions)
Fundamental problem – it is what you HAVE in the atmosphere, not what
you PUT in the atmosphere, that controls the temperature

Calculations are for year in 2011

Human (9GtC in) – ocean (2.3GtCout) – biosphere(2.6GtC out)Complexity of carbon cycle• Identification of sinks needs dedicatedmeasurements• CO2 uptake by oceans lead to ocean
acidicfication• Knowledge of terrestrial and ocean
sinks is essential for definition ofanthropogenic contribution

How to get emissions?
• “Bottom-up” measurements (IPCCreporting)– Emissions reporting– Reported and “verified” offsets– Site-specific measurements•“Top-down” measurements– Comprehensive atmosphericobservation system– Ecosystem and ocean
observations– Inverse modelling•

Combination of above– Need to compliment bottom withobserved

NDCs

Assuming that weknow ocean andbiospheric uptake

NDC are evaluated every 5 years• Are we on the right track?
• Where can we cut more?
• Are oceans and biosphere working as expected?

UNFCCC Process and concept evolutionThen (2010)

Binding Multi-national Treaty Commitments

Now (2016)

Nationally Determined Contributions“we will verify your reported emissions” “we will help you improve your data”

A grand, top-down GHG Information
System
Advocates: Science Community!!!

Federation of focused monitoring systems
Advocates: WMO (191 countries), States(eg, CA), Cities (eg, C40), NGOs, Industry(eg, Oil Companies)

The Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas
Information System (IG3IS)
Goal: Support the success of post-COP21 actions ofnations, sub-national governments, and the private
sector to reduce climate-disrupting GHG emissions
through a sound-scientific, measurement-based
approach that:– reduces uncertainty of national emission
inventory reporting,– identifies large and additional emission reduction
opportunities, and– provides nations with timely and quantified
guidance on progress towards their emission
reduction strategies and pledges (e.g., NDCs)
Concept paper was approved by WMO Executive
Council in 2016

The Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas
Information System (IG3IS)
Principles

 IG3IS will serve as an international coordinating mechanismand establish and propagate consistent methods andstandards.
 Diverse measurement and analysis approaches will fit within
a common framework.
 Stakeholders are entrained from the beginning to ensurethat information products meet user priorities and deliver on
the foreseen value proposition.
 Success-criteria are that the information guides additionaland valuable emission-reduction actions.
 IG3IS must mature in concert with evolution of technology
and user-needs / policy.

Near-term IG3IS Objectives(3-5 year horizon)
Support of Paris Agreement:• Improved national inventory reporting by making use ofatmospheric measurements for all countries• Timely and quantified trend assessment of NDCs in support of“Global Stocktaking”
Key sub-national efforts and new mitigation opportunities:
 GHG monitoring in large urban source areas (megacities)• Detection and quantifying large unknown CH4 emissions

Implementations of IG3IS
Two main directions of work:• Development of best practices for each of the four near-term objectives• Implementation of pilot projects for different objectives
Preparation on the pilot projects (for improved inventories reportingand trend assessment):• Switzerland and UK demonstrated possibility (“best practices”)• Applications to Green Climate Fund are being developed by Brazil, SouthAfrica and Morocco to establish national projects• Areas of interested to be addressed by the projects are agriculture, land
use change (may be energy production)• Network design to be developed as a part of feasibility study• Other countries are planning national studies using national funds(Australia, New Zealand, South Korea)

Example from UK report to UNFCCC: Methane• Early (1990s) mismatch with theinventory.
• Difficult to understand, most likely
cause is landfill emissions but
retrospectively challenging toinvestigate.
• Inspired DECC to expand thenetwork from 1 to 4 stations.
8,000
7,000

Emissions (kt)

6,000Mace Head - error bars
represent the 5th and 95thpercentiles

5,000
4,000
3,000

DECC - error bars represent
the 2.5th and 97.5thpercentiles

2,000
1,000
-

UK GHGI - error bars
represent the 2.5th and97.5th percentiles

UK MetOffice NAME model is used for flux mapping

Inverse Modelling for Inventory Validation

Insitu CH4
CarboCount-CH
Constituent
observations

High resolution
FLEXPARTCOSMO
Simulated flux
sensitivities

Swiss GHG Inventory +EDGAR
A priori estimates ofsurface flux

Inversionalgorithm

A posteriori estimatesof surface flux
Country total emissions

Total CH4 emissions 2013
stephan.henne@empa.ch

Example from Switzerland: Methane• Great match between national total (“bottom-up” and “top-down”) but
incorrect spatial distribution(S. Henne et al., 2016)

New Zealand “top-down” regional
carbon programme• NAME is used for the inversemodelling.
• Currently 3 observation sites
contribute CO2 data to theinverse model.
• NIES Transfuture 5observations are included
when it is within the domain.
• Adding 2 new sites this year.

(Steinkamp etal, 2017)

Terrestrial Biosphere Flux Estimates

Inverse Estimates
Prior Uncertainty
Formal uncertainty from the inversion
Sensitivity cases

Geographic Distribution ofInverse Flux Estimates• Larger uptake than prior model orbottom up accounting, particularly
in forested regions• Differences to bottom up
accounting partly due todifferences between LULUCF andwhat the atmosphere ‘sees’.
These issues are still being
resolved.

How to make it happen?
National scale (reduction of emission inventories uncertainties and situational awareness):•

Installation of several new measurement stations (with initial analysis of footprint)•

Enhanced measurement programme (for attribution), including isotopic measurements•

Installation of transport models (linked with NWP) to be operated in inverse mode•

Establishment of appropriate data infrastructure (to combine diverse information)

Urban scale and new mitigation opportunities:Use of national GHG maps (as above), combined with satellite observations to identify “hot spots”

Equip mobile laboratory with high resolution GHG equipment

On urban level – collect additional information on high resolution meteorology

Perform inverse modelling

Required partnerships:-National emission inventory agency for a-priori emission information and uptake of results-Municipalities – for urban statistics and uptake of results-Environmental protection Agency – for joint development of high density urban network (both airquality and GHG with use of high quality GAW recommended equipment at a number of stations andpotential lower cost technologies for dense monitoring)Where do we want to get to?
“Nesting” – from the planet to a building• Global consistency• Consistency across scales• standardization

WMO Role in GHG Information and IG3IS:
Methods and standards for GHG Observations
The Role of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)• Ensure high quality, consistent, • Coordinate global atmosphericcontinuous GHG and othermeasurements; improve models
observations of atmosphericand analysis• Leverage capabilities acrosscomposition• Develop high quality atmospheric programs and nations• Build capacity in developing
transport and data inversion
nationsmodelsSummary• There is an immediate need for tools to assist innational emission inventory assessment• IG3IS and other complimentary products offer this.
• Best practice studies to be established as pilot
projects• Availability of tools to enable a wide uptake.
• Need to ensure consistent language for clarity.

Thoughts on future needs•

How do we ensure two/three way conversations aretaking place to more rapidly meet the goals?

•What can we add as observations that aid theinterpretation of source and sink processes?

•How do we access/combine/promote observations ofdifferent lineages.

•

We have a need to work across boundaries at all levels
ensuring that the big picture stays clear.

Thankyou