JASON: CAN CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENTS BE VERIFIED?

January 26, 2011 at 9:42 am | Posted in Remote Sensing Law Current Events | Leave a comment

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

If meaningful international agreements are reached to limit or reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming, then it will be necessary to verify compliance with such agreements. This turns out to be a challenging problem, involving technical, analytical and political dimensions. The JASON scientific advisory panel was asked to investigate the options.

“For cooperative countries, the technology currently exists to directly monitor GHG emissions sufficiently well on an annual basis to support U.S. decision-making on international agreements,” the JASONs found (pdf).

On the other hand, “For non-cooperative countries, there is currently no demonstrated capability to estimate country-level emissions using direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 that has sufficient accuracy to support monitoring of compliance with international agreements.” More…