IPCC EXPERT MEETING ON
Uncertainties and Cross Cutting Issues in Inventory Management
CULHAM, UNITED KINGDOM, 5-7 OCTOBER, 1999
OBJECTIVES• To provide good practice guidance on:1.) Quantifying and reporting absolute and trend uncertainties in greenhouse gas inventories
2.) Quality assessment, quality control and data archiving procedures.
3.) Methodological choice and time series consistency.
4.) Inventory checking and verification against independently compiled estimates, reference
calculations, and atmospheric measurements.
• To develop a conceptual basis for uncertainty analysis of emission inventories.
• To promote common understanding by means of a glossary of terms
PARTICIPANTS: Inventory experts, scientists, representatives from government, international and nongovernmental organisations.
LOCATION:Culham, United Kingdom

PRODUCTS:

Input to the IPCC Report on Good Practice in National Inventory Preparation
Including Managing the Uncertainties, which will be considered for acceptance by
IPCC XVI.

ORGANISERS:IPCC Programme on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, UK National
Environmental Technology Center, and UK Department of the Environment,
Transport, and the Regions
PRELIMINARY AGENDA

Tuesday, 5 October, 1999
8:30 - 9:00

9:00 – 9:10
9:10 – 9:30

UK

9:30 – 9:50

R. Acosta

9:50 – 10:00

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Registration and coffee
Plenary Session
Welcome, introduction,
SBSTA request, outcome from Paris and sector workshops, final
product, and contribution of this meeting.

Revision of UNFCC Reporting Guidelines and work
programme under Arts 5, 7 and 8 of the Kyoto Protocol
Discussion1

10:00-10:20

Ian Galbally

Plenary Presentations by Authors: (major issues and challenges)
Conceptual basis for uncertainty analysis

10:20 – 10:40

Simon Eggleston

Quantifying uncertainties in practice

10:40 – 10:50

Questions to papers 1 and 2

10:50 - 11:10

Coffee break

11:10 – 11:30

Joe Mangino

QA/QC of inventory systems

11:30 – 11:50

Kristin Rypdal

Methodological choice
Questions to of papers 3 and 4

11:50 - 12:00
12:00 - 12:20

Author

Discussion

12:20 – 12:30
12:30 – 12:50

Checks and verification at national and at international level

Milos Tichy

Glossary

12:50 - 13:00

First plenary discussion of glossary.

13:00 – 14:00

Lunch

14:30 – 16:00

Break out Sessions

16:00 – 16:30

Coffee Break

16:30 – 18:00

Break out Sessions

Wednesday, 6 October
8:30 - 9:00

Meeting of Break-out Group Chairs - Assessment of progress

9:00 - 9:30

Plenary Session
Glossary presentation/discussion

9:30 – 10:45

Break out sessions

10:45 – 11:00

Coffee Break

11:00 – 13:00

Break out sessions

13:00 – 14:00

Lunch

14:00 – 16:00

Break out sessions

16:00 – 16:30

Coffee Break

16:30 – 18:00

Break out sessions

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Thursday, 7 October
8:30 - 9:00

Meeting of Break-out Group Chairs - Assessment of progress

9:00 – 10:45

Break out sessions

10:45 – 11:00

Coffee Break

11:00 – 13:00

Break out sessions

13:00 14:00

Lunch

14:00 – 16:00

Break out sessions

16:00 - 16:45
16:50- 17:45

Plenary Session
Breakout Group and Glossary Summaries: presented by Chairs
General Discussion
Conclusion of the meeting

Chair

Friday, 8 October
9:00 – 11:00
Organisers’ post meeting
Rooms will be available if there are break out groups who need time to finalize their reportcontributions. Coffee/tea will also be available.

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3AGENDA FOR BREAK-OUT GROUP
Break-out group chair:

The chair should present a summary of the background paper (10-20minutes), lead the discussions, report to the plenary, and complete theguidance “Good practice in Inventory preparation” after the meeting.
By the end of the meeting, the breakout groups must provide firstdrafts on good practice guidelines for their subject. These will befurther revised in co-operation with the chairs according to the agreed
time schedule.

Background papers:

The background papers will serve as the basis for substantive
discussion on good practice guidance. The breakout groups will use
the afternoon of day 1 to discuss general issues and establish
ownership of the background papers. The Glossary will be completed
before the meeting and presented for agreement in plenary.

Presentation of national
approaches:

Depending on the subject and time allotted, this will consist of 1-3
presentations. The meeting and break-out group chairs should try toidentify candidates 2 weeks before the meeting. Each presentation
should summarize a national approach to a subject, and identify main
issues and problem areas. (5-10 minutes each)

Break out groups:
1. Conceptual basis for
uncertainty analysis:

This group will clarify which statistical concepts can be applied toinventories. This included evaluation of: scaling up emission factor
and activity data; representative sampling; handling missing data;
combining uncertainties which may be large compared to the mean;
and/or not normally distributed; uncertainties which are related intime or across sectors; splicing together of different methodologies
whilst maintaining consistency; and the use of uncertainties forprioritising research efforts.

2. Quantifying uncertainties inpractice:This group will formulate a proposal for a tiered approach to estimateuncertainties drawing on output from sectoral meetings and resultsfrom national studies. It will also try to establish rules for making useof expert judgement and for the harmonisation of expert judgementfrom sector meetings as well as rules for the combination ofuncertainties. It will also complete uncertainty advice where missing
in addition to finding agreement on conventions (e.g., standardisationon 95% confidence intervals and standards for direct measurements).
Finally, it will work on the assessment of uncertainties in trends andsuggest a tabular format for reporting uncertainties.

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3. QA/QC of inventory
systems:

This group will formulate a proposal for QA/QC procedures to be included ingood practice in inventory management, taking into account international
standards and allowing for central archiving, decentralised archiving, andarchiving for confidential review. The proposal should also reflect therequirements for auditing, the relationship to UN-FCCC reporting guidelines
and review procedures, and the need for central co-ordination to ensure
consistency on data inputs throughout inventory calculations

4. Methodologicalchoice:This group will formulate a proposal for the general rules, including thedefinition of major sources (for which detailed methods appropriate) andsmall sources (for which simpler methods may be used) taking account size
and rate of change of emissions from source. It will also define when achange of methodology is appropriate – because better data became available
or because mitigation technologies were introduced. It will also outline
practical rules for splicing methodologies whilst maintaining time seriesconsistency. Finally, it will consider the reporting of methodological choiceincluding decision tree indexing and tabular format.

5. Checks andverification at national
and at international
level:

This group will make a proposal of the verification systems for GHG
Inventories. It should discuss their relevance to inventory management ofreference calculations, comparisons of emission factors, independently
compiled estimates, and atmospheric measurements. It should also contain thereporting results of checks and verification

Glossary:

There will not be a separate group for the glossary but input will be requested
from the break out groups.

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