3^rd International Workshop on Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas InventoriesLPNU, Lviv, Ukraine22 – 24 September 2010

The assessment of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on both political and scientific agendas internationally. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), parties to the Convention have published national GHG inventories, or national communications to the UNFCCC, since the early 1990s. Methods for proper accounting of human-induced GHG sources and sinks at national scales have been stipulated by institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many countries have been producing national assessments for well over a decade. However, as increasing international concern and cooperation aim at policy-oriented solutions to the climate change problem, a number of issues have begun to arise regarding verification and compliance under both proposed and legislated schemes meant to reduce the human-induced global climate impact.

The issues of concern at the International Workshops on Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas Inventories − the 1st Workshop was held on September 24-25, 2004, in Warsaw, Poland; and the 2nd Workshop on September 27-28, 2007, in Laxenburg, Austria − are rooted in the level of confidence with which national emission assessments can be performed, as well as the management of uncertainty and its role in developing informed policy. The Workshops cover state-of-the-art research and developments in accounting, verifying and trading GHG emissions and provide a multidisciplinary forum for international experts to address the methodological uncertainties underlying these activities. The topics of interest center around national GHG emission inventories, bottom-up versus top-down emission analyses, signal processing and detection, verification and compliance, and emission trading schemes.
In a follow-up workshop, jointly organized by the Austrian-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Lviv Polytechnic National University in Ukraine international experts are invited to address uncertainty concerning, but not limited to:

• Achieving reliable national GHG inventories
• Accounting emissions across spatial scales (project, national, regional/continental)
• Bottom-up versus top-down emission analyses
• Detecting and analyzing emission changes
• Reconciling short-term commitments and long-term targets
• Verification and compliance
• Trading emissions
• Communicating, negotiating and effectively using uncertainty.

The Workshop will provide a multidisciplinary forum to intensively discuss these and related questions and their state-of-the-art. It is of specific interest to policymakers, scientists and other experts. Special attention will be given to translating scientists’ understanding of uncertainty into options of use for policy makers to consider uncertainty in frameworks of negotiating climate change.