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Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use

See all data and research on:
CO2 & Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Data sources and processing
Insights about this data
Data sources and processingRelated articlesRelated charts
Insights about this dataRelated articlesRelated charts

What you should know about this indicator

  • Population is the most commonly used metric throughout Our World in Data. It is used directly to understand population growth over time, and indirectly to calculate per-capita indicators, making it easier to compare countries of different sizes.
  • We construct this indicator by combining multiple sources covering different periods.
    • HYDE v3.3 (2023): historical estimates from 10,000 BCE to 1799.
    • Gapminder v7 (2022): for 1800-1949.
    • UN World Population Prospects (2024): for 1950 onwards, including 2100 projections.
    • Gapminder Systema Globalis (2023): additional source for former countries (Yugoslavia, USSR, etc.)
  • Breaks in the data may occur at the boundaries between sources due to their methodological differences.
  • You can read more about the sources and methodology in our dedicated article. We also provide a table of sources showing the source we use for each country-year.
  • We calculate geographical aggregates (continents, income groups, etc.) by summing individual country populations. For years before 1800, we rely directly on HYDE's values for continents to ensure historical consistency.
Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use
are measured in tonnes per person of over a 100-year timescale.
Source
Jones et al. (2024); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
November 21, 2024
Next expected update
November 2025
Date range
1850–2023
Unit
tonnes of CO₂ equivalents per person

Related research and writing

Thumbnail

Greenhouse gas emissions

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser

Explore charts that include this data

What you should know about this indicator

  • Population is the most commonly used metric throughout Our World in Data. It is used directly to understand population growth over time, and indirectly to calculate per-capita indicators, making it easier to compare countries of different sizes.
  • We construct this indicator by combining multiple sources covering different periods.
    • HYDE v3.3 (2023): historical estimates from 10,000 BCE to 1799.
    • Gapminder v7 (2022): for 1800-1949.
    • UN World Population Prospects (2024): for 1950 onwards, including 2100 projections.
    • Gapminder Systema Globalis (2023): additional source for former countries (Yugoslavia, USSR, etc.)
  • Breaks in the data may occur at the boundaries between sources due to their methodological differences.
  • You can read more about the sources and methodology in our dedicated article. We also provide a table of sources showing the source we use for each country-year.
  • We calculate geographical aggregates (continents, income groups, etc.) by summing individual country populations. For years before 1800, we rely directly on HYDE's values for continents to ensure historical consistency.
Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use
are measured in tonnes per person of over a 100-year timescale.
Source
Jones et al. (2024); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
November 21, 2024
Next expected update
November 2025
Date range
1850–2023
Unit
tonnes of CO₂ equivalents per person

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Jones et al. – National contributions to climate change

A dataset describing the global warming response to national emissions CO₂, CH4 and N2O from fossil and land use sources.

National contributions to climate change due to historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

This dataset describes the global warming response to national emissions CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O from fossil and land use sources since 1851.

National CO₂ emissions data are collated from the Global Carbon Project (Andrew and Peters, 2023; Friedlingstein et al., 2023).

National CH₄ and N₂O emissions data are collated from PRIMAP-hist (HISTTP) (Gütschow et al., 2023).

A time series of cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions is constructed for each country, gas, and emissions source (fossil or land use). Emissions of CH₄ and N₂O emissions are related to cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions using the Global Warming Potential (GWP*) approach, with best-estimates of the coefficients taken from the IPCC AR6 (Forster et al., 2021).

Warming in response to cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions is estimated using the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE) approach, with best-estimate value of TCRE taken from the IPCC AR6 (Forster et al., 2021, Canadell et al., 2021). 'Warming' is specifically the change in global mean surface temperature (GMST).

The data files provide emissions, cumulative emissions and the GMST response by country, gas (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O or 3-GHG total) and source (fossil emissions, land use emissions or the total).

Retrieved on
November 21, 2024
Retrieved from
https://zenodo.org/records/7636699/latest
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Jones, Matthew W., Glen P. Peters, Thomas Gasser, Robbie M. Andrew, Clemens Schwingshackl, Johannes Gütschow, Richard A. Houghton, Pierre Friedlingstein, Julia Pongratz, and Corinne Le Quéré. “National Contributions to Climate Change Due to Historical Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide”. Scientific Data. Zenodo, November 13, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14054503.

A dataset describing the global warming response to national emissions CO₂, CH4 and N2O from fossil and land use sources.

National contributions to climate change due to historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

This dataset describes the global warming response to national emissions CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O from fossil and land use sources since 1851.

National CO₂ emissions data are collated from the Global Carbon Project (Andrew and Peters, 2023; Friedlingstein et al., 2023).

National CH₄ and N₂O emissions data are collated from PRIMAP-hist (HISTTP) (Gütschow et al., 2023).

A time series of cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions is constructed for each country, gas, and emissions source (fossil or land use). Emissions of CH₄ and N₂O emissions are related to cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions using the Global Warming Potential (GWP*) approach, with best-estimates of the coefficients taken from the IPCC AR6 (Forster et al., 2021).

Warming in response to cumulative CO₂-equivalent emissions is estimated using the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE) approach, with best-estimate value of TCRE taken from the IPCC AR6 (Forster et al., 2021, Canadell et al., 2021). 'Warming' is specifically the change in global mean surface temperature (GMST).

The data files provide emissions, cumulative emissions and the GMST response by country, gas (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O or 3-GHG total) and source (fossil emissions, land use emissions or the total).

Retrieved on
November 21, 2024
Retrieved from
https://zenodo.org/records/7636699/latest
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Jones, Matthew W., Glen P. Peters, Thomas Gasser, Robbie M. Andrew, Clemens Schwingshackl, Johannes Gütschow, Richard A. Houghton, Pierre Friedlingstein, Julia Pongratz, and Corinne Le Quéré. “National Contributions to Climate Change Due to Historical Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide”. Scientific Data. Zenodo, November 13, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14054503.

Various sources – Population

Our World in Data builds and maintains a long-run dataset on population by country, region, and for the world, based on various sources.

You can find more information on these sources and how our time series is constructed on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The long-run data on population is based on various sources, described on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Our World in Data builds and maintains a long-run dataset on population by country, region, and for the world, based on various sources.

You can find more information on these sources and how our time series is constructed on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The long-run data on population is based on various sources, described on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

Emissions given in tonnes have been converted to carbon-dioxide equivalents over a 100-year timescale using a conversion factor of 273 for nitrous oxide, 29.8 for methane from fossil sources, and 27.2 for methane from agricultural and land use sources. These factors are taken from the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Jones et al., Various sources. Retrieved from https://auto-epoch.owid.pages.dev:8789/20250925-233948/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions.html [online resource] (archived on September 25, 2025).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Jones et al. (2024); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Jones et al. (2024); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use” [dataset]. Jones et al., “National contributions to climate change 2024.2”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved November 1, 2025 from https://auto-epoch.owid.pages.dev:8789/20250925-233948/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions.html (archived on September 25, 2025).