Enhancing climate change policymaking
Climate change in Europe, particularly in atmospheric composition, is proving difficult to evaluate due to disparate research initiatives, lack of vision and unavailability of research tools. This drastically interferes with governments' abilities to create policies that address such a serious environmental challenge. To overcome barriers to evidence-based policymaking, the EU-funded ACCENT-PLUS (Atmospheric composition change: the European network-policy support and science) project facilitated the transformation of research results into policies. The project built on efforts of the earlier ACCENT initiative, which brought together leaders of the atmospheric science community. ACCENT-PLUS enhanced collaboration in the field by upgrading European global change and air quality research within the context of the European Research Area (ERA). Through links with other global research projects and powerful databases, the project delved into key air quality and climate-related topics such as ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen cycle and methane. One of the most relevant contributions of ACCENT-PLUS in a policy context were the four scientific review papers (ACCENT-PLUS Topical Papers) that presented the latest on key issues. The papers covered the fields of tropospheric ozone and its precursors, the global nitrogen cycle, the atmospheric methane budget, and particulate matter with emphasis on the role of aerosols in air quality and climate. The papers were prepared by a large interdisciplinary team of scientists and submitted to the international journal 'Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry'. They are expected to have a major impact on the international science community in the field of atmospheric composition change. ACCENT-PLUS involved policymakers, national governments, EU representatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other stakeholders in a bid to build a comprehensive vision and foster consensus on the topic. Project activities should facilitate an unprecedented level of research on climate change, helping Europe and even other regions of the world address this pressing phenomenon.
Keywords
Climate change, policy, ozone, particulate, nitrogen cycle, methane budget, aerosols
