US Carbon Emissions Map

Purdue University has made available a map of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in the United States. The statistics are broken down by region (both state-level or county-level) and by emissions source. Data can also be viewed by absolute or per-capita emissions.

Here is some background on the map:

A science team led by researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., integrated seven primary data sets, including imagery of Earth’s surface captured by the NASA-built Landsat 5 satellite, fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy, and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau....

The new Vulcan maps assimilate fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions data that was previously available from disparate sources and in different formats into one comprehensive data product. The fine level of detail offers more accuracy for estimating the fossil fuel contribution to the global carbon budget, the balance of carbon absorbed by Earth and released into the atmosphere. The Vulcan data product provides new scientific opportunities to assess the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and climate in the atmosphere and to see what future variability and extremes may bring.

Displaying the map requires a Google Earth browser plugin, which is downloadable from the emissions website.