The European Commission’s  Joint Research Centre has developed a high resolution digital view of man-made green house gas (GHG) emissions for any 10 km x 10 km area in the world. Scientists from the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) have made it possible to visualize the distribution of GHG emissions all over the world at local level through an add-on layer to Google Earth™.

This application brings environmental information closer to the world’s citizens. By simply entering a city name, the amount of greenhouse gases released since 1970 can be visualized. In addition, the main sources of GHG emissions in the year 2005 can be identified: industries (fuel combustion, process and waste emissions in energy and manufacturing industries); transport (road, rail, shipping); residential fuel combustion and waste handling; and agriculture.

As in my last post Jeremy pointed out  “the environmental footprint of their premises, logistics and supply chain, paper and ink consumption, utility consumptions (water, electricity,…), transportation and travels, waste, etc. must also be a point of concern”. Using this application we can definitely get a better view to the complete picture.

How to Use the Application:

• Install Google Earth

• Downloaded EDGAR GHG viewer 2005

Once you have installed Google Earth, install EDGAR GHG viewer and restart the application. Its just a matter of some clicks. I was really excited to see it for the first time. I am attaching a few snapshots that I took today morning. Try it yourself, you will understand how grave the scene is atleast in Europe, China, India  and USA.

Snapshot 1 – US of A.                                                           Snapshot 2 – Europe and Middle East with Africa

Snapshot 3 : Asia.

Representations : The data presented here covers carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorcarbons (HFCs), perfluorcarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In order to compare different greenhouse gas emissions the emissions of individual gases have to be converted into CO2-equivalents. The Green Areas of Map has 0.00 -0.10 G equivalent of CO2 and Black/Blue spots are worst affected areas with or more 250 G equivalent of CO2 .

Personally, I hope this modeled simulation of World Wide GHG emissions will help a lot of people involved in Carbon Foot printing or planning to join the Green movement world wide. Let me know your ideas and reviews about this. The data sets are also available for download (free ) at the link.

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