AFOLU workshop

The CHE project

Under the European Green Deal, Copernicus is exploring how it can support EU Member States as well as the wider global community to monitor their emissions with observation-based information. Such a capacity would deliver consistent and reliable information to support informed policy- and decision-making processes, both at national and European level. The European Commission, with the support of a dedicated CO2 Monitoring Task Force, therefore, plans to establish an observation-based operational anthropogenic CO2 emissions Monitoring and Verification Support capacity (CO2MVS) as part of its Copernicus programme. Discussions coordinated by the European Commission started in 2015, with activities becoming more concrete in 2018 with the kick-off of the Carbon Dioxide Human Emissions (CHE) project. CHE is coordinated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and funded through the EU Horizon 2020 (H2020) research programme.

CHE has been exploring how a system to monitor global carbon dioxide emissions related to human activity could work, including advising the European Commission on future developments. In parallel, the H2020-funded VERIFY project, led by the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE) in France, is investigating how to estimate greenhouse gas emissions using the current observation infrastructure for the European area.

While the CHE project will finish at the end of this year, it will be followed up by a new project that will provide a prototype system for a new Copernicus carbon dioxide service (CoCO2), further developing carbon dioxide emission monitoring capabilities. ECMWF will also lead CoCO2 with the plan to embed the service into the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) in the next phase of Copernicus, which will start in 2021.

Aims of the workshop

The AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) sector is a critical part of the (anthropogenic) carbon cycle and can play an important role in terms of mitigation efforts through an enhancement of removals of greenhouse gases, as well as reduction of emissions through management of land and livestock. The CO2 Monitoring Task Force therefore recommended clarification on the different definitions and methods used in the current reporting and identification of a roadmap for greenhouse gas monitoring of the AFOLU sector and its components as part of the CO2MVS.

The CHE workshop will address these questions and aims:

to get a European consolidated view on the needs (for UNFCCC/Paris Agreement, LULUCF Directive, EU carbon neutrality targets) with respect to the AFOLU sector and its components, which then can be translated into technical requirements for the CO2MVS capacity.

to define the agenda for a wider AFOLU workshop in 2021 with international outreach.

The workshop will address the following questions:

What are the UNFCCC requirements for the AFOLU sectors and its components and how are these currently handled in the official reporting?

What is the current state of science (both bottom-up and top-down and how do they converge)?

What observations (satellite and in situ) do we have to support observation-based estimates?

How would the AFOLU sector fit in the CO2MVS?

To what extent do we need to account for AFOLU in the CO2MVS from the start in order to close the carbon cycle?

What are the main topics to address in the second workshop?

The workshop is planned for 25 November, 14:00 – 17:00 CET, and 26 November, 09:30 – 12:30 CET. The key questions will be introduced by invited speakers with the remaining time allocated for discussion.

Participation to this workshop will be by invitation only. The workshop will be organised as a virtual event, with agenda and registration link send out to the participants in the next weeks.

Agenda and Presentations

Day 1

Day 2