The Ministry of the Environment of Japan has started a research project since April 2021 to build a monitoring, reporting, and verification support capability for global emissions of GHGs related to human activities in order to deliver a prototype system by 2023, i.e., the year of the first UNFCCC’s Global Stocktake. A key concept to attain is greater confidence in inversion of atmospheric observations, for estimation of carbon fluxes. Detailed measurements made by dedicated satellites and in-situ networks will be used in an operational GHGs monitoring, and develop validation support capacity that will combine the observational data with traditional GHGs emissions inventories in a data-assimilation system.
The combined data will enable transparent and consistent quantitative assessment of GHGs emissions and their trends globally, at the scale of countries, megacities and the most significant point source (large power stations). We will show the research activities in Japan using satellite and in-situ observations for making contributions to monitor greenhouse gas emission reductions, especially to the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement. In addition to speakers from Japan, we invite a speaker from the United States, who would talk about international activities and expectations to researches in Japan.

• • Akihiko Ito Earth System Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies Head
  • Tomohiro Oda Universities Space Reserch Associaon Senior Scientist
  • Ryuzo Sugimoto International Cooperation and Sustainable Infrastructure office Global Environmental Bureau, Ministry of the Environment, Japan Director
  
  ▼Online speakers
  • Nobuko Saigusa National Institute for Environment Studies Director
  • Hiroshi Suto Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Associate Senior Engineer
  • David Crisp JPL/Caltech Senior Research Scientist
  • Prabir Patra Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Principal Scientist
  • Masataka Watanabe Chuo University Professor
  • Moeko Yoshitomi Office of Global Environment and Decarbonizaing Innovation Reserch, Global Environment Bureau, Ministry of the Environment, Japan Governmental Official

• COP26_Japan Pavilion Panel discussion.pdf

The objectives of the seminar are to introduce research activities of Japan in terms of monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) budget and to make discussions toward the first Global Stocktake in 2023. The seminar consisted of five topical presentations and a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Tomohiro Oda, USRA. The first presentation was made by Dr. Akihiko Ito, NIES, on the ongoing MOE-funded project of GHG monitoring and modeling. He showed possible contributions from Japanese activities to the Global Stocktake, such as regional/national GHG budgets derived from both top-down and bottom-up approaches. The second talk was made by Dr. Hiroshi Suto, JAXA, on the multi-scale observations of GHG with a series of GOSAT satellites, emphasizing the usefulness of almost 12-yrs long data. Then, Dr. Prabir Patra, JAMSTEC, made the third presentation on his advanced inversion model studies for global CO2, CH4, and N2O budgets, using satellite observational data. To improve international contexts, Dr. David Crisp, JPL / Caltech, was invited to this seminar to talk about satellite GHG monitoring missions such as OCO-2 and TROPOMI. The fifth talk was made by Prof. Masataka Watanabe, Chuo University, on the applicational study in Mongolia to support biennial national reporting with GOSAT data. The panel discussion, with participation of Dr. Nobuko Saigusa, NIES, and Dr. Moeko Yoshitomi, MOE, was conducted on the basis of two overarching questions: (1) How can we utilize the knowledge and information you provide from your research to support the current emission reporting and assess our climate mitigation progress towards GST2023? and (2) What changes in society would you like to see/think need to happen/should we see, and how do you detect them and/or how do we make those changes happen? Including questions and comments from audience, the panelists made fruitful discussion on these topics and reached an agreement for the significance of global-wide monitoring and verification systems to support social transformation and decision making.

• To make contributions to the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement, we need to facilitate establishing a monitoring system of greenhouse gas budgets, through global collaboration, by means of observations by satellite and other platforms and models.
• To help solving climate change, air quality, and other many issues, we need more activities for detecting emission changes to support decision making on mitigation and adaptation.
• One of the key challenges for research community is high-resolution visualization of anthropogenic emissions and other important variables to motivate emission reductions and to accelerate contributions to the society.