Live. Climate Now Debate: How are greenhouse gas emissions monitored?

In this week’s Climate Now debate, we will delve into how greenhouse gas emissions are monitored and why it is important to measure sources in the push for net zero. 

Our panellists will also explain why the technology is still unable to give us accurate and comprehensive measurements for some sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and how improvements can be made.

Fill in this question form with your questions for our experts and they will be answered during the live broadcast:

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) have an important role for our planet. They trap heat close to the earth’s surface, ensuring that oceans don’t freeze and our world remains inhabitable. However, particularly since industrial times, human activity has rapidly increased the volume of emissions causing the planet to warm at an unprecedented rate. 

This has prompted an urgent need to curb emissions. To do so, nations, organisations and businesses need to better understand their capability to measure, monitor and model GHGs and therefore pinpoint the biggest emitters. 

To know if actions taken to reduce GHG levels are effective, technology has been developed to measure the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere over time. It requires accurately detecting them in tiny amounts: carbon dioxide in the hundreds of parts per million, methane in thousands of parts per billion, nitrous oxide in the hundreds of parts per billion and fluorinated hydrocarbons at even lower levels.

The European Union and its member countries are required to report to the UN annually on their GHG emissions and regularly on their climate policies and measures and progress towards the targets. 

This involves measuring the emissions of GHGs including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous