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Investigating Methane for Climate Action

Project description

Tackling methane to combat climate change

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than CO2. Its emissions come from various sources, including agriculture, waste and fossil fuels, making it difficult to track and control. In recent years, methane levels have been rising faster than expected. While reducing methane emissions is key to slowing climate change, accurately measuring and managing them remain a challenge. With this in mind, the EU-funded IM4CA project brings together Europe’s leading methane scientists to tackle this issue. By building new monitoring infrastructure and using satellite data, IM4CA will improve methane tracking and clarify the causes behind its rapid rise. The project aims to provide reliable data to guide methane reduction policies.

Objective

The IM4CA proposal unites leading European methane experts in a concerted effort to establish the scientific fundament needed to bring the climate forcing of methane under control. Specific objectives are to: 1) Strengthen methane mitigation policy world-wide with actionable information on local methane emissions and key driving processes, 2) Provide the EU with the measurement and modeling capacity needed to monitor its methane emissions and assess its progress towards the 30% emission reduction target of the European methane strategy and the global methane pledge, 3) Explore and understand climate feedbacks on natural methane sources and sinks, and 4) Improve the accuracy of climate scenarios by resolving the controversy about the causes for the recent growth rate variations in global methane.
To achieve these objectives we address a selection of key uncertainties that have thus far limited the progress towards these goals by: i) building up critical new infrastructure for monitoring methane emissions in Europe and Tropical Africa, ii) developing methodology for efficient use of existing and upcoming satellites for measuring methane and the land surface properties needed for characterizing and attributing its emissions, and iii) translating the knowledge obtained into reliable projections of future methane and efficient emission mitigation scenarios. In doing so, the IM4CA project will enable a breakthrough in meeting the work program challenge of enhancing the quantification and understanding of natural and anthropogenic methane emissions and sinks. It will provide enhanced European assessment capacity of short- and long-term changes in methane sources and sinks integrating information from multi platforms and novel observations and transfer that capacity into actionable information needed to combat climate change.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Coordinator

STICHTING VU
Net EU contribution
€ 2 063 755,00
Address
DE BOELELAAN 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 2 063 755,00

Participants (23)

Partners (1)