WMO Approves Global Greenhouse Gas Watch - UPSC Current Affairs

WMO gives a green signal to the global greenhouse gas watch:

• The World Meteorological Congress has greenlighted a new initiative to monitor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. This will provide a comprehensive picture of global emissions and will be crucial in developing strategies to mitigate them.
• The new global GHG watch is designed to bridge the information gaps and provide an integrated and operational framework. This will bring together all space-based and surface-based observing systems as well as modeling and data assimilation capabilities.
• The GHG watch will have four main components:
  • A comprehensive and continuous global set of surface-based and satellite-based observations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations, along with supporting meteorological, oceanic, and terrestrial variables.
  • Estimates of the GHG emissions based on activity data and process-based models will be made beforehand.
  • A set of global high-resolution Earth System models representing GHG cycles will be part of the system.
  • The models will be accompanied by data assimilation systems that optimally combine the observations with model calculations to generate products of higher accuracy.

Image: GHG Tracker

Source: WMO

Greenhouse gases: Some facts and figures:

• Between the years 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate, also known as radiative forcing, by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by almost 50%. Carbon dioxide was responsible for about 80% of this increase.
• The WMO measures the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, which is what remains in the atmosphere after the gases are absorbed by sinks like the ocean and the biosphere.