Countries to finally refine greenhouse gas inventory
Geneva: UN body Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will open the final draft of its new methodology report for review next week that will help countries enhance national inventory reports of emissions and removals under the 2015 Paris Agreement, if they agree to use it.
The review will be bringing the crucial report one step closer to consideration for adoption by the IPCC in May, it was announced on Friday.
The report, ‘2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories’, is an update to the guidelines or methodologies that countries use to estimate their anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases.
The refinement of the IPCC’s previous guidelines published in 2006 is necessary to provide an updated and sound scientific basis for supporting the preparation and continuous improvement of national greenhouse gas inventories.
Among other things, the 2019 Refinement will help countries enhance national inventory reports of emissions and removals.
This review will run for eight weeks from January 28 to March 24.
IPCC reports go through multiple stages of review to ensure an objective and comprehensive assessment of the latest science.
The first draft is reviewed by experts, the second draft by governments and experts, and the final draft by governments only.
“Review is an essential part of the IPCC process, to help ensure that the reports are balanced and comprehensive. I invite all governments to contribute to this review,” said Kiyoto Tanabe, one of the two Co-Chairs of the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI), which is preparing the report.
“We hope as many governments as possible will take part in this review to strengthen the accuracy and completeness of the draft’s scientific information and overall balance,” said Eduardo Calvo Buendia, the other TFI Co-Chair.
In this final review, governments will submit comments on the report’s Overview Chapter, which will be considered for adoption section by section at a Session of the IPCC in May in Kyoto in Japan and on the full final draft report, which will be submitted for acceptance at the same session.
The aim of the review is to ensure that the Overview Chapter is accurate, well balanced and presents the findings of the underlying report clearly.
The IPCC was created in 1988 to deliver comprehensive assessments of the scientific, technical and socio-economic state of knowledge of climate change, its impacts and risks, and response strategies.
Its contribution to understanding climate change has been fundamental to creating global agreements on common goals, the latest of which is the Paris Agreement.
In the Fifth Assessment Report in 2013-14, the IPCC found that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century.
It found that limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a finding reinforced in the special report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius released in October 2018.
