The Paris Agreement on Climate sets the international objective of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to keep climate warming well below two degrees. However, quantifying past and present GHG emissions and sinks and predicting their future remains a substantial challenge. This challenge is primarily due to the high level of uncertainties in observing and modeling these GHG fluxes at regional to global scales. Thus, achieving climate and emission reduction targets requires a substantial improvement in our scientific ability to estimate the budgets and trends of these key major greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O).
This session aims to bring together studies that seek to quantify past, present, and future global and regional budgets, trends and variability of major GHGs, as well as studies that contribute to understanding the key drivers and processes controlling their variations. We welcome contributions using a variety of approaches, such as emissions inventories, field and remotely sensed observations, terrestrial and ocean biogeochemical modeling, earth system modeling, and atmospheric inverse modeling. We encourage contributions integrating different datasets and approaches at multiple spatial (regional to global) and temporal scales (from past over the present and to the future) that provide new insights on processes influencing GHG budgets and trends in the past and future.