Seminar: Coordinated observing and modeling in support of the newly established U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center – a brief overview of motivation, plans, and progress

Abstract:

Reliable, low latency delivery of high quality global greenhouse gas (GHG) flux and concentration information is a growing but still unmet need to advance expanding measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification efforts that underpin federal climate mitigation strategies. To address this need, in 2023 the White House has outlined an ambitious Federal Strategy for GHG monitoring and formed an interagency U.S. GHG Center tasked with delivering trusted information to a variety of stakeholders. The seminar begins by outlining the first priorities of the GHG Center, which include better understanding of human emissions and natural sources and sinks and developing new observations that can characterize point source emissions, how the center is exploring new approaches to data delivery, workforce development, and stakeholder engagement. It then focuses on efforts to operationalize GHG monitoring products, beginning with a review on current observations and modeling capabilities within the U.S government. The conclusion presents the current status of our ability to deliver timely, consensus GHG products with an emphasis on priority areas of research.