Cumulative CO₂ emissions by world region

Description: Total cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), excluding land-use change, since the first year of available data, measured in tonnes.
Data source: Global Carbon Budget (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Unit: tonnes
Date range: 1750-2024
Last updated: 2025-11-13
Next expected update: 2026-11-13
Managed by: Pablo Rosado

This data is based on territorial emissions, meaning the emissions produced within a country's borders, but not those from imported goods. For example, emissions from imported steel are counted in the country where the steel is produced. To learn more and look at emissions adjusted for trade, read our article: How do CO₂ emissions compare when we adjust for trade?
Emissions from international aviation and shipping are not included in the data for any individual country or region. They are only counted in the global total.

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Frequently asked questions

How did Our World in Data process this 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

Global emissions are converted from tonnes of carbon to tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) using a factor of 3.664. This is the conversion factor recommended by the Global Carbon Project. It reflects that one tonne of carbon, when fully oxidized, forms 3.664 tonnes of CO₂, based on the relative molecular weights of carbon and oxygen in CO₂.
Emissions from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires are included in Kuwait's emissions for that year.

Data sources

Global Carbon Project – Global Carbon Budget

The Global Carbon Budget was established by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) to track global carbon emissions and sinks.

This dataset makes it possible to assess whether countries are making progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement and is widely recognized as the most comprehensive report of its kind.

Since 2001, the GCP has published estimates of global and national fossil CO₂ emissions. Initially, these were simple republished data from other sources, but over time, refinements were made based on feedback and correction of inaccuracies.

Retrieved on

November 13, 2025

Retrieved from

https://globalcarbonbudget.org/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Andrew, R. M., & Peters, G. P. (2025). The Global Carbon Project's fossil CO2 emissions dataset (2025v15) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17417124
The data files of the Global Carbon Budget can be found at: https://globalcarbonbudget.org/carbonbudget/
For more details, see the original paper:
Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Bakker, D. C. E., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Luijkx, I. T., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Anthoni, P., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Decharme, B., Bopp, L., Brasika, I. B. M., Cadule, P., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chau, T.-T.-T., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Cronin, M., Dou, X., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Falk, S., Feely, R. A., Feng, L., Ford, D. J., Gasser, T., Ghattas, J., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Houghton, R. A., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Joos, F., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Kennedy, D., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Körtzinger, A., Lan, X., Lefèvre, N., Li, H., Liu, J., Liu, Z., Ma, L., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P. C., McKinley, G. A., Meyer, G., Morgan, E. J., Munro, D. R., Nakaoka, S.-I., Niwa, Y., O'Brien, K. M., Olsen, A., Omar, A. M., Ono, T., Paulsen, M., Pierrot, D., Pocock, K., Poulter, B., Powis, C. M., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Robertson, E., Rödenbeck, C., Rosan, T. M., Schwinger, J., Séférian, R., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S. M., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Sweeney, C., Takao, S., Tans, P. P., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G. R., van Ooijen, E., Wanninkhof, R., Watanabe, M., Wimart-Rousseau, C., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, J., and Zheng, B.: Global Carbon Budget 2023, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301-5369, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023, 2023.

How to cite

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: Cumulative CO₂ emissions by world region”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Global Carbon Project. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260917-183749/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-region.html [online resource] (archived on September 17, 2026).

How to cite this data

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

Global Carbon Budget (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Global Carbon Budget (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Cumulative CO₂ emissions by world region” [dataset]. Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget v15” [original data]. Retrieved September 17, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260917-183749/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-region.html (archived on September 17, 2026).

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. 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.

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