A New Tool Traces Fossil Fuel Emissions to Health and Economic Costs
Scientists at the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and the Lethal Humidity Global Council have launched the Carbon Impacts Tracer, a tool that converts carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated physical and economic effects from peer-reviewed studies. The Guardian
Prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, is part of the team. The development was funded by the Minderoo Foundation. The tool estimates the impact of carbon dioxide emissions from any project, company or state.
The calculation starts with temperature. It covers eight impact channels, including loss of labour hours due to excess heat, loss of glaciers, death of corals and lost food production. Results give a best estimate inside a likely range of uncertainty, with links to the original studies.
Users can select listed fossil fuel extraction projects, listed carbon majors, or enter custom emissions. Carbon Impacts Tracer Cited examples include additional heat-related deaths in Europe and additional coral loss on the Great Barrier Reef. Uncertainty is shown directly.
The temperature module uses an equation from Abram et al. (2025). The method is detailed in "Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction projects to inform decision-making," published in npj Climate Action in 2025. Full methodology and annotated code are available via Zenodo.
Conversion from total emissions to warming rests on Transient Climate Response to Cumulative CO2 Emissions (TCRE), an exchange rate between pollution and heat. IPCC AR6 assessed the best estimate at 0.45°C per 1,000 GtCO2. IPCC AR6 The equivalent is 1.65°C per 1,000 GtC. Carbon Brief The Tracer applies a TCRE uncertainty range of 0.27 to 0.63°C per 1,000 GtCO2 from IPCC AR6.
Uncertainty ranges are 5th-95th percentiles from Monte Carlo simulations with 100,000 iterations, sampling probability distributions for both TCRE and impact links. This keeps the central estimate and the spread together rather than a single value alone.
Scenario context uses Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways. The numbers in SSP and RCP names denote approximate radiative forcing, or trapped heat, in W/m² by 2100. SSP1-2.6 is strong mitigation aimed at about 1.5°C warming. SSP2-4.5 is moderate mitigation with 2-3°C warming. SSP3-7.0 is limited mitigation with 3-5°C warming by 2100. The Tracer is for informational, research and educational purposes only.
The broader context here is granularity and traceability for practitioners. Project, company and state emissions can run through one common pipeline to indicators for labour, health, food and ecosystems. For work on assessment, disclosure and negotiation, design choices matter as much as outputs. Peer-reviewed functions, published code and percentile ranges allow independent checking. The open question is how consistently institutions interpret ranges that stay wide by design, and whether shared metrics narrow or widen disagreement over responsibility for distributed harms.
