Climate TRACE Shows How and Where Facilities That Contribute to the Climate Crisis Expose 1.6 Billion People to Harmful Air Pollution
New Climate TRACE tool enables anyone to see air pollution plumes flow out of sources that contribute to the climate crisis and into more than 2,500 urban areas.
NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Today, Climate TRACE released a first-of-its-kind tool that makes the microscopic threat of harmful particulate matter (PM2.5) visible to all. The tool shows the flow of air pollution plumes out of sources that contribute to the climate crisis and into the air that 1.6 billion people in more than 2,500 urban areas breathe.
The new tool shows in striking detail the direct connection between the climate crisis and the air pollution that is a significant threat to public health. With nearly 9 million deaths scientifically attributed to PM2.5 pollution around the world each year, identifying and showing which communities are most at risk is an urgent priority.
The tool harnesses data from Climate TRACE's global inventory of more than 660 million sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which includes facility-level data on eight air pollutants that are of high concern for human health. Climate TRACE's inventory now represents a nearly complete global inventory of anthropogenic air pollution.
From these data, Climate TRACE has identified air pollution super emitters: facilities in the top 10% of all PM2.5 sources we track, by volume. These super emitters play an outsized role in putting people at risk. Of the 1.6 billion people who live within the plumes of pollution shown in this new tool, more than half (900 million) are exposed to air pollution by these super emitters.
This first iteration of Climate TRACE's air pollution visualization tool focuses on cities because of the disproportionately high number of people who live in them and are therefore put in harm's way. Climate TRACE is currently visualizing 9,560 sources of PM2.5 in 2,572 urban areas. This reflects every power plant, heavy manufacturing site, port, refinery, and mine in these urban areas.
"Facilities that burn fossil fuels are the overwhelmingly dominant source of heat-trapping pollution that is driving the climate crisis – by using the sky as if it were an open sewer. The particulate air pollution they also create falls downwind into surrounding neighborhoods and is causing the deaths of 8.7 million people per year," said Climate TRACE co-founder and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. "Climate TRACE is releasing this new tool as a call to action: now that we can clearly see how and where people are being exposed to this harmful pollution, our leaders must do something to reduce it."
Climate TRACE analysis finds that the ten urban areas with the most people exposed to air pollution from major contributors to the climate crisis are:
- Karachi, Pakistan — 18,424,184 people
- Guangzhou, China (includes, Foshan, Haizhu, and other districts) — 18,263,760
- Seoul, South Korea — 18,250,031
- New York, United States — 16,753,793
- Dhaka, Bangladesh — 16,291,746
- Cairo, Egypt — 15,815,599
- Shanghai, China — 15,695,451
- Bangkok, Thailand — 14,535,885
- Guangzhou [Shenzhen], China — 14,432,346
- Tokyo, Japan — 14,183,081
The facilities in these ten urban areas alone are exposing more than 162 million people to harmful air pollution – more than the entire population of Japan.
There are also many cities around the world with high population density as well as a high density of facilities that pollute the atmosphere and air.
In the coming year, Climate TRACE will conduct a global analysis of all human-caused sources of PM2.5 pollution to pinpoint where concentrations are highest – down to the neighborhood level – and help determine why by tracing this air pollution from its origins. The coalition will work with public health researchers to further understand the connection between the co-pollutants of burning fossil fuels and public health. Pairing the emissions footprint of individual facilities with demographic and public health information will help identify communities that face a disproportionate pollution burden so that steps can be taken to reduce it.
"Cancer Alley" in the U.S. state of Louisiana provides a clear example of how Climate TRACE's air pollution data can be turned into action. According to Climate TRACE, if Cancer Alley were a nation, it would have the fourth highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the world (behind Qatar, Turkmenistan, and Bahrain). Meanwhile, public health researchers have found that cancer risk in one of the communities in Cancer Alley – Reserve, Louisiana – is 50 times higher than the national average.
Climate TRACE has calculated the footprints of a year's worth of pollution from Cancer Alley's super emitters. Reserve, La., includes one of the areas with the highest concentration of pollution, but there are many others in this 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River where people could face the same or worse pollution burden. Climate TRACE will soon be able to provide similar pollution footprints for all sources with GHG and PM2.5 co-pollutions around the world.
"Many people have long known that they live in the shadow of major emitters, and these global data only validate and quantify what those communities have been saying. But in other cases, dangerous pollution –and exactly who is causing it – can be surprisingly invisible," said Gavin McCormick, co-founder of Climate TRACE and executive director of WattTime. "I was surprised to discover I myself live in the plume of a major emitter I had no idea about."
How it works
Climate TRACE's air pollution tracking tool pairs Climate TRACE's highly detailed global inventory of greenhouse gases and air pollutants with advanced atmospheric modeling of 365 days' worth of local weather patterns around each emitting facility conducted by Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab. By pairing population data with data showing where pollution travels, anyone can easily understand whether they are close enough to a source of greenhouse gas emissions to breathe in harmful PM2.5 co-pollutants. For data on the population exposed to the air pollution depicted in the current version of Climate TRACE's air pollution plume tool, click here.
The tool allows users to view pollution traveling across cities on two representative days, one with prevailing conditions – a day when plumes show how communities in this area were most often exposed to pollution – and another depicting the day with the worst conditions in 2024. The worst condition days are those with the greatest pollution exposure for communities.
Climate TRACE tracks nearly all sources of human-caused PM2.5 pollution (see more information below), but has only visualized the flow of that pollution for power plants, heavy manufacturing sites, ports, refineries, and mines in the 2,572 urban areas where they exist. It is important to note that the tool does not represent all sources of PM2.5 in these urban areas. There are many other sources of this type of air pollution – from fires, to dust, and more – that are common, particularly in cities around the world.
For additional detail, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.
A global database of air pollutants from more than 660 million individual assets
In addition to the PM2.5 emissions covered in the air pollution tracking tool, Climate TRACE has also expanded its coverage of seven other harmful air pollutants: sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), organic carbon, black carbon, carbon monoxide, ammonia, and volatile organic compounds. Global, source-specific data on the monthly and annual volume of these pollutants are available for free and publicly accessible at ClimateTRACE.org.
For frequently asked questions about our non-greenhouse gas emissions data, check out this explainer.
About Climate TRACE
The Climate TRACE coalition was formed by a group of AI specialists, data scientists, researchers, and nongovernmental organizations. Current members include Carbon Yield; Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab; CTrees; Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability; Earth Genome; Former Vice President Al Gore; Global Energy Monitor; Global Fishing Watch/emLab; Hypervine.io; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab; OceanMind; RMI; TransitionZero; and WattTime. Climate TRACE is also supported by more than 100 other contributing organizations and researchers, including key data and analysis contributors: Arboretica, Michigan State University, Ode Partners, Open Supply Hub, Saint Louis University's Remote Sensing Lab, and University of Malaysia Terengganu. For more information about the coalition and a list of contributors, click here.
Media Contact
Fae Jencks and Nikki Arnone, Climate TRACE, 1 (719) 357-8344, [email protected], www.climatetrace.org
SOURCE Climate TRACE
Share this article