High-resolution gridded CO2 and pollutant emission data from road traffic in Indian cities
India has set an ambitious target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. Road transport, contributing to 12% of India's CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, plays a significant role in exacerbating urban air pollution. Given India's swift urbanization, CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from this sector could potentially double by 2050, jeopardizing climate goals. We present CHETNA-Road, a comprehensive 500-meter gridded city traffic emissions dataset for 15 Indian cities derived from street-level floating car data (FCD) based on GPS position and speed of individual vehicles. We applied statistical and machine-learning techniques to improve data quality and extrapolated data to cover all city traffic instead of only the vehicles equipped with GPS using fuel consumption data. We estimated daily CO<sub>2</sub> and ten major pollutant emissions using the COPERT model, which includes speed and vehicle-type dependent emission factors. Finally, we evaluated our dataset against global coarser resolution emission datasets, including Carbon-Monitor cities, EDGAR, and CAMS. Our dataset provides critical insights into India's road traffic emissions and serves as a foundation for targeting congestion and pollution reduction strategies.
Authors
- Harish Chandra Phuleria (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5801-0015)
- Rohith Teja Mittakola (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4723-0797)
- Marc Barthélemy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0890-9713)
- Philippe Ciais (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8560-4943)
- Chuanlong Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8848-8247)
- Xavier Bonnemaizon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5262-5175)
- Nicolas Megel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1967-870X)
- Kounik De Sarkar
- Qinren Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1938-2892)
Institutions
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IN)
- Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (FR)
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (FR)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Centre d'Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales (FR)
- Nexans (France) (FR)
- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (FR)
- CEA Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Institut de Physique Théorique (FR)
- École des hautes études en sciences sociales (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2025-12-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06287-9
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Vehicle emissions and performance
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.68