World’s top polluting cities unveiled by Al Gore, Climate TRACE at COP29

At the United Nation’s annual climate summit, COP29, experts unveiled a list of the world’s top polluting cities, with data revealing the massive impact of urban emissions on global climate challenges. The findings come from Climate TRACE, a coalition co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The group uses satellite and ground-based observations combined with artificial intelligence to track air pollution across the globe.

“With a coalition of 12 members and more than 100 contributors, thousands of people are working to make Climate TRACE more effective every single month,” Gore said during the summit.

The analysis names Shanghai as the highest-polluting city on the planet. It produced more greenhouse gas emissions annually than entire countries like Colombia or Norway. Tokyo ranks second, with emissions so high that the city would place among the top 40 most polluting nations if it were an independent country. Rounding out the top five are New York, Houston and Seoul, with each city emitting over 140 million metric tons of air pollution every year.

“Climate TRACE can help public- and private-sector leaders identify emissions trends and pinpoint high-impact opportunities to reduce pollutants, including those that lead to deeply inequitable public health outcomes,” the emissions tracking organization said in a statement.

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Climate TRACE emphasized that its research offers a more complete picture of global emissions, providing insights into more sectors and sources than traditional monitoring methods. Its data will be continuously updated by scientists and analysts from diverse organizations to track urban contributions to climate change, as they work to keep tabs on a problem which Gore referred to as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.”