1- 1Kiel, Germany (werner@kutsch.fi)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Cities are at the heart of the climate challenge – and of the climate solutions. Responsible for a large share of fossil-fuel emissions, but also hubs of innovation and community engagement, they hold a unique position to accelerate the transition to climate neutrality.
While most cities recognize the need for climate action, effective policy implementation is often hampered by a lack of timely, reliable, and spatially detailed greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data. Traditional, statistic-based inventories frequently suffer from inconsistency, time lags, and missing local detail.
The ICOS Cities project (PAUL – Pilot Applications in Urban Landscapes), running from 2021 to 2025, was co-designed by scientists, policymakers, and local stakeholders to explore how techniques to quantify and partition CO2 emissions and emission reductions based of direct observations can improve informed climate action.
In three pilot cities, Paris, Munich, and Zurich, ICOS Cities brought together and evaluated the most innovative measurement approaches of greenhouse gas emissions in densely populated urban areas. State-of-the-art instrumentations were deployed and innovative combinations of measurements, modelling and inventories further developed.
The most important insight from the ICOS Cities project is that direct observations of GHG fluxes and concentrations combined with inverse modelling can severely support and improve inventories and general knowledge on greenhouse gas emissions from cities.
The presentation will present the key results of the project and give an outline how future services can be developed based on the project results.
Katri Ahlgren, Patrick Aigner, Ivonne Albarus, Anna Augusti-Panareda, Leif Backman, Simone Baffelli, Leonie Bernet, Katie Berns, Laura Bignotti, Andre Bjarby, Augustin Blanco, Dominik Brunner, Pauline Buysse, Nada Caud, Angelica Centanaro, Ingrid Chanca, Mali Chariot, Ke Che, Jia Chen, Andreas Christen, Philippe Ciais, Roger Curcoll, Leslie David, Stijn Dellaert, Marc Delmotte, Hugo Denier van der Gon, Barbara Dias-Carneiro, Jessica Dolan, Claudio D'onofrio, Rianne Droge, David Duccini, Lukas Emmenegger, Markus Eritt, Christian Feigenwinter, Andrea Fischer, Rory Fitzgerald, Idil Gaziulusoy, Bert Gielen, Tobias Grasberger, Martial Haeffelin, Sam Hammer, Minttu Havu, Lynn Hazan, Charlotta Henry, Rainer Hilland, Oshrat Hochman, Astrid Hügli, Liisa Ikonen, Ana-Maria Isidoro-Losada, Leena Järvi, Ute Karstens, Sasu Karttunen, Anni Karvonen, Ville Kasurinen, Kaayin Kee, Jamie Kinsellasmyth, Friedrich Klappenbach, Natascha Kljun, Jiří Kolman, Daniel Kühbacher, Liisa Kulmala, Ann-Kristin Kunz, Werner L. Kutsch, Olivier Laurent, Thomas Lauvaux, Hei Lee, Junwei Li, Jinghui Lian, Morgan Lopez, Benjamin Loubet, Andreas Luther, Robert Maiwald, Moritz Makowski, Tatu Marttila, Matthias Mauder, Ulrich Meyer, Oleg Mirzov, Betty Molinier, Vanessa Monteiro, William Morrison, Giacomo Nicolini, Guillaume Nief, Dario Papale, Nikolai Ponomarev, Michel Ramonet, Leonard Rivier, Pascal Rubli, Emmanuel Salmon, Elena Saltikoff, Olivier Sanchez, Miranda Schreurs, Ricard Segura, Armin Sigmund, Stavros Stagakis, Josef Stauber, Ida Storm, Jani Stromberg, Eric Struyf, Ingrid Super, Haoyue Tang, Oksana Tarasova, Maiju Tiiri Hervé Utard, Alexander Vermeulen, Gara Villalba, Adrian Wenzel, Camille Yver, Diana Zavala
How to cite: Kutsch, W. L. and the ICOS Cities Team: Observing urban greenhouse gas emissions – key results of the ICOS Cities project, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10633, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10633, 2026.
