Environmental Protection Agency: Climate Change Indicators - Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
This indicator describes emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide.
Like the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions indicator, this indicator focuses on emissions of gases covered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and several fluorinated gases. These are all important greenhouse gases that are influenced by human activities, and the Convention requires participating countries to develop and periodically submit an inventory of these emissions.
Data and analysis for this indicator come from the World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), which compiles data from peer-reviewed and internationally recognized greenhouse gas inventories developed by EPA and other government agencies worldwide. Global estimates for carbon dioxide are published annually, but estimates for other gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are available only every fifth year. CAIT includes estimates of emissions and sinks associated with land use and forestry activities, which come from global estimates compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Each greenhouse gas has a different lifetime (how long it stays in the atmosphere) and a different ability to trap heat in our atmosphere. To allow different gases to be compared and added together, emissions are converted into carbon dioxide equivalents. This step uses each gas’s 100-year global warming potential, which measures how much a given amount of the gas is estimated to contribute to global warming over a period of 100 years after being emitted. Carbon dioxide is assigned a global warming potential equal to 1. This analysis uses global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Second Assessment Report. In that report, methane has a global warming potential of 21, which means a ton of methane emissions contributes 21 times as much warming as a ton of carbon dioxide emissions over 100 years, and that ton of methane emissions is therefore equal to 21 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. See the table for comparison with global warming potentials from IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.
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This indicator describes emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide.
Like the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions indicator, this indicator focuses on emissions of gases covered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and several fluorinated gases. These are all important greenhouse gases that are influenced by human activities, and the Convention requires participating countries to develop and periodically submit an inventory of these emissions.
Data and analysis for this indicator come from the World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), which compiles data from peer-reviewed and internationally recognized greenhouse gas inventories developed by EPA and other government agencies worldwide. Global estimates for carbon dioxide are published annually, but estimates for other gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are available only every fifth year. CAIT includes estimates of emissions and sinks associated with land use and forestry activities, which come from global estimates compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Each greenhouse gas has a different lifetime (how long it stays in the atmosphere) and a different ability to trap heat in our atmosphere. To allow different gases to be compared and added together, emissions are converted into carbon dioxide equivalents. This step uses each gas’s 100-year global warming potential, which measures how much a given amount of the gas is estimated to contribute to global warming over a period of 100 years after being emitted. Carbon dioxide is assigned a global warming potential equal to 1. This analysis uses global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Second Assessment Report. In that report, methane has a global warming potential of 21, which means a ton of methane emissions contributes 21 times as much warming as a ton of carbon dioxide emissions over 100 years, and that ton of methane emissions is therefore equal to 21 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. See the table for comparison with global warming potentials from IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.