Climate TRACE Inventory Sept 2026 (Version 5.11.0) Data Licensing, Schema, and Citation Guide

The document outlines the technical structure and legal permissions for the Climate TRACE Inventory (v5.11.0). It defines the metadata for emissions source, country-level, confidence, and ownership files, while specifying that most data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. It also provides a comprehensive list of recommended citations for various sectors and identifies third-party data sources used for specific emissions estimates.

• The majority of Climate TRACE data is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License, though certain datasets reproduced from external sources require users to review the original source's terms.
• The inventory reports greenhouse gas emissions for Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), and Nitrous oxide (N2O), as well as CO2-equivalents based on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Global Warming Potentials for 20 and 100-year timeframes.
• Beyond greenhouse gases, the dataset includes air pollutants such as Particulate Matter (PM2.5), Black Carbon (BC), Organic Carbon (OC), sulphur dioxide (SO2), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Ammonia (NH3), and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx).
• The data schema for emissions sources includes detailed attributes such as source identifiers, geospatial coordinates, emissions quantities, activity data, emissions factors, and capacity factors.
• Confidence levels for reported data—including source type, capacity, activity, and emissions—are classified qualitatively as "very high", "high", "medium", "low", or "very low".
• The inventory incorporates data from several external organizations for specific sectors, including the EDGAR Community GHG Database, the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS), and FAOSTAT.
• The dataset includes a global emissions reduction solutions framework that assigns a 'difficulty score' to strategies, where lower scores indicate more practical options and higher scores represent more resource-intensive ones.

APA

Climate TRACE (2026). Climate TRACE Inventory Sept 2026 (Version 5.11.0) Data Licensing, Schema, and Citation Guide. https://media.climatetrace.org/about_the_data_latest_b6e7b8d419.pdf

Chicago

Climate TRACE. Climate TRACE Inventory Sept 2026 (Version 5.11.0) Data Licensing, Schema, and Citation Guide. 2026. https://media.climatetrace.org/about_the_data_latest_b6e7b8d419.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate TRACE |title=Climate TRACE Inventory Sept 2026 (Version 5.11.0) Data Licensing, Schema, and Citation Guide |date=September 2026 |url=https://media.climatetrace.org/about_the_data_latest_b6e7b8d419.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatetrace2026climate, author = {{Climate TRACE}}, title = {{Climate TRACE Inventory Sept 2026 (Version 5.11.0) Data Licensing, Schema, and Citation Guide}}, institution = {Climate TRACE}, year = {2026}, month = sep, url = {https://media.climatetrace.org/about_the_data_latest_b6e7b8d419.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }