Empowering Climate Action: Advancing Emissions Transparency with Climate TRACE

By Dan McCarey

As the impacts of climate change intensify—with more frequent and severe weather events, rising sea levels, and widespread ecological disruption—access to accurate, timely emissions data has never been more critical.

Climate TRACE is a coalition of organizations leveraging advanced technologies, such as satellites and AI, to independently monitor and report greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This data provides the transparency needed to hold emitters accountable and empowers policymakers, businesses, and individuals to take meaningful climate action. The initiative aims to provide unprecedented transparency, empowering governments, organizations, and individuals to take informed climate action.

I worked with the Earth Genome to develop this release, which introduces a range of improvements and features that make the presentation of the data more interactive, insightful, and user-friendly. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the map has been reimagined and the technical decisions that shaped it.

Key Updates and Enhancements

Adopting a Flexible Tech Stack

To enable quick iterations and seamless collaboration, we chose a robust tech stack consisting of Next.js, React-Map-GL, Observable Plot for charts, and Ant Design (AntD) for components. These tools allowed us to build efficiently while maintaining flexibility:

• React
• React-Map-GL made it easier to integrate interactive map features in a declarative pattern.
• Observable Plot was selected for its clarity and speed in rendering timeseries data.
• AntD offered a comprehensive component library that streamlined the UI design process.

Hosting the staging builds on Vercel further facilitated the development process, allowing us to create preview branches that could be shared with the Climate TRACE coalition for feedback and testing.

Transitioning to Monthly Data

One of the biggest updates in this release is the shift to displaying monthly emissions data. To help improve performance and support this change, we developed an API response structure capable of providing dynamic annual and monthly totals split across combinations of sectors and subsectors. This required rethinking how the data is structured and visualized to ensure users can quickly understand and interact with the new granularity.

Visualization of Timeseries Data

One challenge was selecting a charting library that could handle large datasets while remaining responsive and visually clear. Observable Plot proved to be the perfect fit, delivering both performance and elegance in timeseries rendering.

Seamless Navigation Between Views

Users can now switch effortlessly between map and list views. Both views share the same filtering interface, ensuring a consistent experience regardless of the chosen mode. This consistency simplifies data exploration and ensures that users can focus on insights without grappling with multiple UIs.

Sharable Map States

Sharing insights from the map is more straightforward than ever. We updated the syntax for mapping the current context—including filters, zoom level, location, and selected asset—into a sharable URL. This feature ensures that users can share the exact view they’re analyzing with colleagues or stakeholders.

City Emissions, Urban Boundaries, and Non-GHG Gases

For the first time, the map includes city-level emissions data, urban boundaries, and data on non-GHG gases. This addition highlights the role of urban centers in global emissions and provides comprehensive insights into a wider array of pollutants, complementing the broader dataset. This addition highlights the role of urban centers in global emissions, providing a more localized perspective that complements the broader dataset.

Looking Ahead

This release marks a significant step forward in visualizing Climate TRACE data, but the journey doesn’t end here. We’re committed to continuous improvement, incorporating feedback, and expanding the map’s capabilities to better serve users exploring emissions data.

By building a solid foundation with a modern tech stack and introducing features that prioritize usability and insight, we’ve created a tool that empowers users to understand and act on emissions data like never before.