"ridiculous precision" being 1km resolution. Considering how one of the author's said "The U.S. taxpayers have a right to this data" I really wish they had put up a web viewer
At 1km resolution, this is largely just a map of US urbanized areas. The spatial variation isn't that interesting. The temporal variation and the absolute values per spatial unit are the greater value of this project.
I'm interested in how accurate "America’s Dirtiest Carbon Polluters" is when they are measuring "CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion". I assume the majority of carbon pollution comes from fossil fuel combustion, but that is just an assumption. It would be nice to have that explicitly shown.
A quick search suggests %90 percent of human caused CO2 emission is from fossil fuel consumption (things like calcium carbonate produce half of cement emissions). All cause emissions of CO2 dwarfs human emissions, but as part of a cycle that consumes CO2 as well.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 21.8 ms ] threadHere's the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-06391-w
And the data as a bunch of zipped geotiffs: https://zenodo.org/records/15446748
A reasonable-ish resolution version of the headline image (total CO2 emissions 2010-2022): https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/...
And my favorite: Difference in CO2 emissions between 2010 and 2022: https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/...
A quick search suggests %90 percent of human caused CO2 emission is from fossil fuel consumption (things like calcium carbonate produce half of cement emissions). All cause emissions of CO2 dwarfs human emissions, but as part of a cycle that consumes CO2 as well.