Under the leadership of the University of Utrecht, seventeen organizations will enhance the detection and measurement of all major greenhouse gases in eight European countries over the next four years. New insights are critical to increasing greenhouse gas reductions and the country’s emission reports, which are prepared annually at the request of the United Nations. Project, PARIS named, received 6 million euros from the European Horizon funding program.

Once a year, RIVM and partners prepare a National Inventory Report for the Netherlands together for the United Nations. This report provides an overview of all significant greenhouse gas emissions and is a requirement for the 198 member countries United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): the master agreement of the 2015 Paris Agreement. These members include the eight participating countries in the project: the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Norway and Ireland.

Improve reports

PARIS (PROcess Attribution of Regional EmISsions) wants to improve this mandatory inventory report. The goal is to develop a new method that detects and measures a country’s emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, based on observations of the atmosphere. In addition, PARIS wants to make new estimates of F-gas emissions, and aerosols of organic matter and black carbon. “We wanted to know where the particles come from and how big the emission is,” said project leader Thomas Röckmann, professor of Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry at the University of Utrecht.