Benefits of dealing with uncertainty in greenhouse gas inventories: Introduction

Jonas, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1269-4145, Marland, G., Winiwarter, W. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7131-1496, White, T., Nahorski, Z., Bun, R., & Nilsson, S. (2010). Benefits of dealing with uncertainty in greenhouse gas inventories: Introduction. Climatic Change 103 (1) 3-18. 10.1007/s10584-010-9922-6.

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Abstract

The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the internatonal political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change proble have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhoue gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed in this Special Issue reflect attempts to improve natinal inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective-a perspective that seeks to trengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These aproaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papersshow that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead t invalid views of subsystems. Thismay eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainy does not come for free. Proper treatment of uncertainty is costly and demanding because it forces us to make the step from "simple to complex" and only then to discuss potential simplifications. Finally, comprehensive treatment of uncertainty does not ofer policymakers quick and easy solutions. The authors of the papers in this Special Issue do, however, agree that uncertainty aalysis must be a key component of national GHG inventory analysis. Uncertainty analysis helps to provide a greater understnding and better science helps us to reduce and deal with uncertainty. By recognizing the importance of identifying and quantiying uncertainties, great strides can be made in ongoing discussions regarding GHG inventories and accounting for climate chang. The 17 papers in this Special Issue deal with many aspects of analyzing and dealing with uncertainty in emissions estimates

Item Type:	Article
Research Programs:	Atmospheric Pollution (APD) Forestry (FOR)
Bibliographic Reference:	Climatic Change; 103(1-2):3-18 (November 2010) (Published online 15 July 2010)
Depositing User:	IIASA Import
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2016 08:43
Last Modified:	27 Aug 2021 17:21
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/9219

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