AMIGO: reason to be

The traditional ‘bottom-up’ approach for estimating the emissions relies on the extrapolation of geographical and statistical data which are available only on sparse spatial and temporal network. The extrapolation often leads to large uncertainties in emission estimates, mainly caused by the high variability of emission fluxes in space and time. Complementary to this approach, observation-based techniques developed during the last 15 years or so have demonstrated the strong potential for improving the current emission estimates through the use of chemical observations acquired from ground-based networks, aircraft, and especially, spaceborne missions. Although a growing body of studies using a variety of observations and (inverse) analysis methodologies is currently available, there has been little systematic evaluation of the results to assess their consistency, to compare the methodologies and various observations used in each study.

To bridge this gap, AMIGO will organize synthesis assessments (articles, review articles, workshops, session in international conferences, etc.) to evaluate the consistency of different approaches aiming to quantify the emissions of various reactive and greenhouse gases across different scales. Additionally, AMIGO aims to address innovative research activities building on the expertise and ideas of the international scientific community.

Links to international organizations

Links will also be established with several international organizations including the

1. World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
2. Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW)
3. Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS)
4. Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (LRTAP)
   
5. Global Carbon Project (GCP)
6. Committee on Earth Observation Satellites Atmospheric Composition Virtual Constellation (CEOS-AC/VC).
7. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Representatives from some of these organizations (e.g., IG3IS/GCP, CAMS) have participated in the scoping meeting which was held in Toulouse in 2018. Links are established with other IGAC activities (e.g. CCMI, GEIA, etc)