🤖 AI Summary
Existing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission datasets suffer from low accuracy, incomplete coverage, coarse spatiotemporal resolution, and significant reporting lags—impeding effective climate monitoring and evidence-based policymaking. To address these limitations, this study develops Climate TRACE, an open-access platform that delivers facility-level, monthly, near-real-time estimates of anthropogenic emissions across all major sectors—including power generation, industry, and transportation. Leveraging multi-source data—including satellite remote sensing, ground-based measurements, and legacy inventories—the platform employs sector-specific, AI-driven models to perform dynamic gap-filling and synergistic inverse modeling. Emission estimates are published monthly starting from January 2021, with a latency of only two months, and cover subnational administrative units worldwide. The platform is designed for accessibility by non-technical users. This work substantially enhances transparency, traceability, and responsiveness in emissions monitoring, establishing a new paradigm for data-driven climate governance.
📝 Abstract
Global greenhouse gas emissions estimates are essential for monitoring and mitigation planning. Yet most datasets lack one or more characteristics that enhance their actionability, such as accuracy, global coverage, high spatial and temporal resolution, and frequent updates. To address these gaps, we present Climate TRACE (climatetrace.org), an open-access platform delivering global emissions estimates with enhanced detail, coverage, and timeliness. Climate TRACE synthesizes existing emissions data, prioritizing accuracy, coverage, and resolution, and fills gaps using sector-specific estimation approaches. The dataset is the first to provide globally comprehensive emissions estimates for individual sources (e.g., individual power plants) for all anthropogenic emitting sectors. The dataset spans January 1, 2021, to the present, with a two-month reporting lag and monthly updates. The open-access platform enables non-technical audiences to engage with detailed emissions datasets for most subnational governments worldwide. Climate TRACE supports data-driven climate action at scales where decisions are made, representing a major breakthrough for emissions accounting and mitigation.