Researchers outline the limitations of the current IPCC guidelines.
In the face of a changing climate, the process of accounting greenhouse gas emissions is becoming ever more critical. Governments around the world are striving to hit reduction targets using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines to limit global warming. To have a chance of hitting these targets, they need to know how to accurately calculate and report emissions and removals.
The IPCC guidelines are essential but woefully out of date, say researchers from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES), and in need of improvement as countries prepare inventory reports as part of Paris Agreement commitments over the next year.
“Global society could be doing a better job in producing greenhouse gas inventories,” said Leehi Yona ’18 M.E.Sc., the lead author of a paper recently published in the academic journal Ambio. “It is paramount that we get greenhouse gas inventories right, so that the emissions we report are equal to the emissions in the atmosphere. Closing this gap between actual and reported emissions is a prerequisite to successful climate change mitigation.”
Yona was joined on the paper by Mark Bradford, professor of soils and ecosystem ecology at F&ES, and former F&ES faculty member Ben Cashore.
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