An approach for verifying biogenic greenhouse gas emissions inventories with atmospheric CO sub(2) concentration data

Verifying national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories is a critical step to ensure that reported emissions data to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are accurate and representative of a country's contribution to GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. Furthermore, verifying biogenic fluxes provides a check on estimated emissions associated with managing lands for carbon sequestration and other activities, which often have large uncertainties. We report here on the challenges and results associated with a case study using atmospheric measurements of CO2 concentrations and inverse modeling to verify nationally-reported biogenic CO2 emissions. The results suggest that observations of atmospheric CO2 concentration data and inverse modeling could be used to verify biogenic emissions, and provide more confidence in biogenic GHG emissions reporting to the UNFCCC.