Carbon Cities: Interactive Geographies Where Burden and Responsibility Diverge
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he-heyutian-mcp-dusp-2026-thesis.pdf
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6.21 MB
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59beac9fb7154047783729ad82a81494
Author(s)
He, Yutian
Advisor(s)
Cong, Cong
Date Issued
May 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The global rise in CO2 levels is well-established, but the spatial-temporal nuances within and underlying mechanisms are less known, with cities being evaluated by emissions but experienced through exposure. Top-down observations from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) mission offer meaningful advances in geographic reach and sub-annual temporal resolution relative to bottom-up and annually-reported inventories, and can enable seasonal analysis across climate zones, but interdependencies between multi-indicator climate datasets limit interpretability without purpose-built analytical tools. This thesis introduces Carbon Cities, an interactive visualization tool and analytical framework designed for global structure detection, mechanism diagnosis, and policy action. It systematically and strategically addresses three questions: which cities sit at structural extremes of rising CO2 levels, what might explain those anomalies, and what could be done next? Drawing on OCO-3 retrievals for 346 cities spanning 2019-2025, the tool enables targeted correlation exploration across common and user-defined variables, organized within a taxonomy of indicators structured by temporality and mechanisms (dispersion, biogenic uptake, population exposure, anthropogenic emissions), to contextualize climate-zone-specific policy interventions. By centering transparency and interpretability of climate data, this work functions as a decision support tool for discovery and exchange between carbon cycle scientists and climate governance networks, facilitating research-driven policy and policy-informed research.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
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