[A-CG46] Emulators: development and applications

[ACG46-P07] Aligning long-term climate mitigation with enhanced methane action

*Tanaka Katsumasa^1,2, Kushal Tibrewal¹, Philippe Ciais¹, Olivier Boucher³ (1.Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement (LSCE), Gif-Sur-Yvette, FRANCE, 2.National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, JAPAN, 3.Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), Paris, FRANCE)

Abstract
The Global Methane Pledge (GMP) and other methane measures may potentially undermine CO₂ mitigation in certain countries, unless they are considered as additional to the existing Nationally Determined Contributions to strengthen overall greenhouse gas emission targets. Maintaining the progress on CO₂ mitigation in the revision of Nationally Determined Contributions after the first Global Stocktake, while pursuing the immediate benefits from methane mitigation, is necessary to address climate change in the long-term.
Enhanced CH₄ targets should be integrated into the respective NDCs for consistency. We argue that in doing so, countries should strengthen their NDCs jointly with enhanced CH₄ targets (if applicable) without relaxing their CO₂ targets. This is particularly important for countries with abundant cost-effective CH₄ mitigation opportunities in the oil and gas sector but not yet part of GMP, to ensure that enhanced methane action goes hand in hand with long-term climate mitigation.

Reference
Tanaka, K., Tibrewal, K., Ciais, P. & Boucher, O. (2024) Aligning long-term climate mitigation with enhanced methane action. arXiv (preprint) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.04749