Summary
According to its website, Climate TRACE is a global non-profit coalition that independently tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with the goal of making meaningful climate action faster and easier. It provides a detailed database of human-caused emissions from all major sources. The data is free and available for download. Each data package includes annual country-level emissions by sector and by GHG from 2015-2021.
The data can be filtered by the Agricultural sector, which contains two areas specific to beef and dairy milk production systems: enteric fermentation and manure management. Each area can be explored by the following emissions (as applicable): carbon dioxide equivalent, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
The Agricultural sector data was derived by identifying beef and dairy feedlots in California, Texas, and parts of Argentina and using facility level cattle population data from the United States to develop a cattle population prediction mode. An emission factor was then applied to the population data. The result is facility level emission estimates. More about the feedlot population datasets, remote sensing datasets, remote sensing derived datasets, temperature data, and IPCC emission factors can be found in this document detailing the model’s methodology.