Coordinated European contribution to the WMO Global Greenhouse Gas Watch and its international governance

Expected Outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• EU strategic climate data autonomy and decision-making sovereignty;
• global benchmarking of EU Greenhouse Gas observations and monitoring;
• enhanced coordinated EU contribution and support to global GHG monitoring, reporting and verification;
• effective EU climate policy implementation, as well as reporting and diplomacy on the global scene;
• visibility of the EU climate action on the global scene.

Scope

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established in 2023 a new global greenhouse gas monitoring initiative that aims to support WMO Members in climate change mitigation actions undertaken to implement the Paris Agreement. The WMO Global Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W) will fill critical information gaps and provide an integrated, operational framework that brings under one roof all space-based and surface-based observing systems, as well as modelling and data assimilation capabilities in relation to greenhouse gas monitoring. G3W plays a key supporting role to the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. Proposals are expected to:

• consolidate the EU contributions to these global GHG monitoring efforts through resilient and competitive environmental observing network capabilities, and to foster international data exchange cooperation.
• develop innovative (including AI/ML-based) digital solutions, which can facilitate inversions, automate monitoring, reporting and verification obligations, as well as the overall operationalization of GHG monitoring.
• focus on new GHG data products on global, regional, national and local scales. These should make use of all relevant existing and upcoming EO data including Copernicus Sentinels and relevant contributing missions, as well as ground-based networks (e.g. GAW, ICOS, TCCON, etc.) and socio-economic data as relevant.
• support international intercomparison and benchmarking (e.g. uncertainty characterization) efforts. Use cases addressing hot spot emission monitoring are particularly welcome.
• provide clear plans for global cooperation, transition into operational services, data sharing and integration across sectors, policy uptake, knowledge exchange and capacity building activities.

Additionally, the action should embrace all the relevant initiatives existing at the European level and include a relevant panel of users and stakeholders at EU and national level. It should support the EU in addressing its international commitments under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) may join the consortium selected for funding as a member, or participate in the project in another way, as the tools developed under this action are relevant for JRC’s role as leader of the Copernicus CO2 Task force and can facilitate EU level assessments of greenhouse gas emissions.

International cooperation is encouraged.