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Climate scientist finds large errors in Al Gore-founded Climate TRACE, a global climate pollution database
https://news.nau.edu/gurney-2026/May 5, 2026
New research from Northern Arizona University found that a global greenhouse gas emissions database produced by the Climate TRACE consortium, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is underestimating vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in cities by an average of 70%.
Today, professor Kevin Gurney of NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) published results in Environmental Research Letters analyzing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and trucks in the recently released Climate TRACE database. He said these findings, combined with a previous study noting similar discrepancies at power plants, raise concerns because accurate and reliable information on greenhouse gas emissions is a critical ingredient for society’s response to climate change.
“Given the importance of vehicle CO2 emissions in cities, we carefully examined the Climate TRACE data which relied on promising new artificial intelligence-based approaches,” Gurney said. “When combined with our previous study on Climate TRACE power plant CO2 emissions, our results suggest that the Climate TRACE data significantly underestimate over half of U.S. fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in cities.”
…
“While the Vulcan onroad data is not perfect, with uncertainty of about 14%, this is far lower than the differences found when we compared 260 city vehicle CO2 emissions in the U.S. to the Climate TRACE database,” said Bilal Aslam, a SICCS postdoc and co-investigator on the study. “The Climate TRACE CO2 emissions were, on average, 70% lower than those same emissions in the Vulcan onroad CO2 emissions database.”
…
Kevin R Gurney et al 2026 Environ. Res. Lett. 21 094018
New research from Northern Arizona University found that a global greenhouse gas emissions database produced by the Climate TRACE consortium, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is underestimating vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in cities by an average of 70%.
Today, professor Kevin Gurney of NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) published results in Environmental Research Letters analyzing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and trucks in the recently released Climate TRACE database. He said these findings, combined with a previous study noting similar discrepancies at power plants, raise concerns because accurate and reliable information on greenhouse gas emissions is a critical ingredient for society’s response to climate change.
“Given the importance of vehicle CO2 emissions in cities, we carefully examined the Climate TRACE data which relied on promising new artificial intelligence-based approaches,” Gurney said. “When combined with our previous study on Climate TRACE power plant CO2 emissions, our results suggest that the Climate TRACE data significantly underestimate over half of U.S. fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in cities.”
…
“While the Vulcan onroad data is not perfect, with uncertainty of about 14%, this is far lower than the differences found when we compared 260 city vehicle CO2 emissions in the U.S. to the Climate TRACE database,” said Bilal Aslam, a SICCS postdoc and co-investigator on the study. “The Climate TRACE CO2 emissions were, on average, 70% lower than those same emissions in the Vulcan onroad CO2 emissions database.”
…
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ae6355
