MEMO2: MEthane goes MObile – MEasurements and MOdelling

CH4 emissions are a major contributor to Europe’s global warming impact and emissions are not well quantified yet, although this is indispensable knowledge to reach the targets of 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) and the required massive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. There are significant discrepancies between official inventories of emissions and estimates derived from direct atmospheric measurement, and effective emission reduction can only be achieved if sources are properly quantified and mitigation efforts are verified. MEMO2 is a H2020 MSCA European Training Network with more than 20 collaborators from 7 countries and will contribute to the targets of the EU with a focus on methane (CH4). The goal of the project is to bridge the gap between large-scale scientific estimates from in situ monitoring programs and the ‘bottom-up’ estimates of emissions from local sources that are used in the national reporting by the combination of I) developing and deploying new and advanced mobile methane (CH4) measurements tools and networks, II) isotopic source identification, and III) modelling at different scales. This paper will give a brief overview of the project and its results achieved during the first two years.