Matthias Jonas - Böcker

Uncertainty analysis is a key component of national GHG inventory analyses. The issues that are raised by the authors in this volume – and the role that uncertainty analysis plays in many of their arguments and/or proposals – highlight the importance of such efforts. Topics include: bottom-up versus top-down emission inventory approaches, compliance and verification issues, signal detection and analysis techniques, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, and the role of uncertainty in emissions trading schemes.

This book is based on the 2014 Special Issue 124(3) of Climatic Change. It brings together 16 key papers presented at, or produced, subsequent to the 2010 (3rd) International Workshop on Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. The Workshop was jointly organized by the Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine; the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences; and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria. This book has been written to enhance understanding of the uncertainty encountered in estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and in dealing with the challenges resulting from those estimates. Such challenges include, but are not limited to i) monitoring emissions; ii) adhering to emission commitments; iii) securing the proper functioning of emission trading markets; and iv) meeting low-carbon or low-GHG futures in the long term. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed by all authors attempt to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective that seeks to strengthen their usefulness under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches show the challenges and benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analysis and where advances are being made.

This book is based on the 2014 Special Issue 124(3) of Climatic Change. It brings together 16 key papers presented at, or produced, subsequent to the 2010 (3rd) International Workshop on Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. The Workshop was jointly organized by the Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine; the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences; and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria. This book has been written to enhance understanding of the uncertainty encountered in estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and in dealing with the challenges resulting from those estimates. Such challenges include, but are not limited to i) monitoring emissions; ii) adhering to emission commitments; iii) securing the proper functioning of emission trading markets; and iv) meeting low-carbon or low-GHG futures in the long term. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed by all authors attempt to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective that seeks to strengthen their usefulness under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches show the challenges and benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analysis and where advances are being made.

Uncertainty analysis is a key component of national GHG inventory analyses. The issues that are raised by the authors in this volume – and the role that uncertainty analysis plays in many of their arguments and/or proposals – highlight the importance of such efforts. Topics include: bottom-up versus top-down emission inventory approaches, compliance and verification issues, signal detection and analysis techniques, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, and the role of uncertainty in emissions trading schemes.

The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the international political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change problem have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed here reflect attempts to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective — a perspective that seeks to strengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papers show that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead to invalid views of subsystems. This may eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainty 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 offer policymakers quick and easy solutions.