IG3IS Project Guidelines: Objective #1

Process:

• Please read through the IG³IS Implementation Plan to find guidance on how to design your project
• Please carefully study the essential requirements for a IG³IS project to make sure that your project qualifies for one of the objectives
• Fill in the application letter and send it by email and by ordinary post (a signed paper version) to: Dr. Oksana Tarasova (OTarasova@wmo.int) Chief, AER/WMO (application letter on last page of this document)
• Your application will be considered by the IG³IS team and confirmation will be sent to you. Please kindly specify your contact details in the application
• As soon as you get a confirmation of acceptance (about 1 month after application is received in the WMO Secretariat or longer if additional considerations are needed) details will be requested by IG³IS staff in order to publicize your project on the IG³IS website

Requirements:

There are four key IG³IS objectives identified in the IG³IS Science Implementation Plan (section 3 “IG³IS Objectives”). The first objective is to support the reduction of uncertainty in national emission inventory reporting to the UNFCCC. Second, is to provide information to governments and businesses that will help locate and quantify previously unknown emission reduction opportunities such as fugitive methane emissions from industrial sources. Third, is to support subnational government entities such as cities and states that represent large GHG source regions (e.g., megacities) with actionable information on their GHG emissions at the needed spatial, temporal and sectoral resolution to evaluate and guide progress towards emission reduction goals. Fourth, and finally, is to support the Paris Agreement’s global stock take as governments and the UNFCCC define their requirements.

The requirements for projects promoting each of the objectives is outlined below. In order to increase the ease of coordinating this application with the Implementation Plan, the objective requirements are organized by the same section headings as seen in the IG³IS Implementation Plan. Before submitting your application, please study these carefully to ensure that your project qualifies.

Essential Characteristics Needed for an Objective #1 Project (sections 2.2 - 2.5)

Requirements Regarding Section 2.2 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: User-based Information Requirements, Current Capabilities and Gaps

1. Identify the emission categories with the largest uncertainty in your project’s country
2. Identify the tiers of measurement and model complexity that your project will seek using the figure below

Requirements Regarding Section 2.3 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: Measurement Network Design

1. Outline how you have integrated continuous communication with your local stakeholders, in order to create opportunities for “course-correcting.” This could include proof of meetings that occurred, changes in strategy that followed a discussion, etc.
2. Identify the most suitable sites (e.g., towers, buildings, hilltops) in country and potential gaps in coverage. This analysis of the existing infrastructure should consider the local environment, spatial coverage, and also practical aspects. For each identified suitable site, provide the:
   • Method for the site to connect to the internet
   • Power source of the site
   • Accessibility of the site
   • Proximity to other sites
   • Proximity to significant sources, buildings, and vegetation
   • Characteristics of the local environment including topography
   • Height above the sampling surface
3. Provide proof that network design has been considered in the choice of locations. An OSSE may be the most appropriate tool to achieve this, but it is not the only option.

Requirements Regarding Section 2.4 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: Measurement Network Development

Requirements for the selection of appropriate instrumentation for greenhouse gases, for co-emitted species, and for key local meteorological parameters such as planetary boundary layer height:

1. Describe how you determined that your measurement network is built on uniform, well-established equipment and procedures. One way to do this is to show the cost savings from not needing maintenance and/or the training of technicians
2. Discuss your reasoning for choosing to include or not to include measurements of co-emitted species such as NOx, CO, hydrocarbons and isotopes
3. Provide proof that the following instrumentation setup guidelines were considered, and if needed, reasoning for why it was not included:
   • Selection of adequate greenhouse gas analyzers with necessary precision, accuracy, stable performance, and low needs for intervention
   • Selection of peripheral equipment (data acquisition, valves, pumps, flow control, water removal, calibration units, etc.)
   • Selection of instrumentation for auxiliary measurements, e.g. for co-emitted air pollutants like NOx, CO, hydrocarbons, for isotopes, radon, flask sampling
   • Selection of equipment for standard meteorological parameters (wind, temperature, humidity, pressure) and for more advanced parameters such as turbulent fluxes or planetary boundary layer height
   • Measurement setup, i.e. installation of all equipment on site, mounting of inlets and sampling lines, air conditioning, etc.
   • Definition of standard operating procedures, i.e. responsible personnel, frequency of station visits, interventions and maintenance, etc.
   • Development of a quality assurance/quality control framework (e.g. calibration strategy, selection of reference gases, reference scales, traceability to WMO, network intercompatibility, linearity, blanks, drift correction, determination of overall measurement uncertainties), procedures for troubleshooting in case of instrumental issues
   • Design of data management (data visualization, review, processing, archiving, and dissemination)

Requirements Regarding Section 2.5 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: Model Development

1. Verify that your findings are modular, documented, free, and open-source and that they are flexible enough to support different transport models, control vectors, and inversion techniques. With this, your inversion results can be tested for the ability to reproduce them on different systems
2. Verify whether your inversion models were run by you or by an external company/modelling center. If they were run by you, specify which type of inversion system you have used: Lagrangian particle dispersion models (LPDMs), ensemble Kalman filter approaches, or other

Requirements Regarding Section 3.8 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: Capacity Building and Outreach

1. Describe and prove how you have built local capacity through knowledge transfer and training in order to encourage the success of your project

Additional Essential Characteristics Needed for an Inverse Modeling (sections 6.2 & 6.5)

Requirements Regarding Section 6.2 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: Development of inverse modelling techniques

1. Verify that your inverse modelling method applies the Bayes theorem for quantifying uncertainties

Requirements Regarding Section 6.5 of the IG³IS Implementation Plan: First urban-scale experiments: demonstration of the approach

1. Verify that your results can be supported by another inversion study/technique. This could be run by you, or come from the results of a project conducted by someone else
2. Prove that you have conducted sensitivity experiments and uncertainty assessments with your inversion model