Greenhouse gases in the Earth system:
Setting the agenda to 2030

2010 marked the 50th anniversary of Dave Keeling’s first publication of atmospheric CO2 measurements. This conference discussed the use of long-term monitoring to understand greenhouse gases in the Earth System. New scientific advances promise regional audit of emissions, assessment of uptakes, and better understanding of controlling and feedback processes. The meeting assessed these, to shape the agenda for the next 20 years.

Meeting agenda
Downloadable PDFs of talks:

Euan Nisbet
Meeting introduction

Session 1: Global budgets and trends

Martin Manning
The growing priority for understanding greenhouse gases in a policy perspective

Euan Nisbet & Ed Dlugokencky
Methane: The changing global budget and the risk of surpise

Ingeborg Levin
Greenhouse gases emission reductions in Europe until 2020 by more than 20% – reality or fiction?

Ralph Keeling & Andrew Manning
What have we learned from carbon isotopes and O2/N2?

Ray Weiss
Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from atmospheric measurements: A critical reality check for climate legislation

Session 2: Tracking changes in sources and sinks:

Steven Wofsy
The critical role of fine-grained atmospheric data in determining the rates of transport, sources and sinks of greenhouse gases across the globe

Corinne Le Quéré
Uncertainties in estimates of annual sources and sinks of CO2

Andrew Watson
Monitoring and interpreting the ocean uptake of atmospheric CO2

Nicolas Gruber
Warming up, getting sour, losing breath: Ocean biogeochemistry under change

Session 3: Modelling trends and feedbacks:

Marina Lévy
Sub-mesoscale turbulence in the ocean: How does it affect oceanic pCO2?

Peter Rayner
Uncertainties in the relationship between concentrations and emissions

Eric Wolff
Greenhouse gases in the Earth system: A palaeoclimate perspective

Justus Notholt
Ground-based total column measurements of greenhouse gases using the solar absorption spectrometry

Alistair Manning
The challenge of estimating regional emissions from observations

Session 4: Future perspectives and policy relevance:

Peter Cox
Highly contrasting effects of different climate forcing agents on terrestrial ecosystem services

Philippe Ciais
Attributing the increase of atmospheric CO2 to historical emitters and absorbers

David MacKay
The scale of the decarbonization challenge

John Ashton
The politics of the low carbon transition MP3 audio file

Sir Crispin Tickell
The equities of measurement MP3 audio file


envSoft
Alex Etchells 2021