BOSTON, Sept. 16 - Reuters : An industry and academic coalition backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was set to unveil on Thursday data showing fossil fuel producers' previously unrecorded greenhouse gas emissions and growing pollution from shipping and aviation.
Other details about the atmospheric sources of climate change are also shown in Climate TRACE, drawing on data from satellites and high-level computer analysis.
The data should be useful to leaders of the 100 countries with little data on their most pollluting sectors, Gore said in an interview on Wednesday.
Among worrisome trends, oil and gas producers and refiners in developed countries will emit more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide that is not currently being reported, the group said.
The shipping industry's emissions have increased about 10% each year since 2018 despite the COVID - 19 pandemic, added the group.
Gore said the new data should not lead to pessimism, since the additional emissions have already shown up in gauges of atmospheric carbon.
As the old cliche said it: you can only control what you measure, Gore said.
The release comes ahead of the COP 26 world climate conference set to start October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland. Talks there are aimed at raising ambitious commitments by countries to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degree Celsius in this century, in line with the Paris Accord of 15 October 2015.
Climate TRACE's name invokes its goal of 'Tracking Real-Time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions". The coalition grew out of Google.org grant that funded the measurement and analysis of power plant emissions from space, it said in a statement.
The suppliers of satellite data for the project include Planet Labs Inc, NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploratory Agency. Other coalition members include the geospatial data company Blue Sky Analytics, research organization CarbonPlan, and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.