(Above) In 2010, New York City emitted 54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. With a single day’s CO₂ emissions, the city “buries” the Empire State Building with 149,903 ten-meter-diameter spheres, each containing one metric ton of the gas.

Left: A street-level view shows the scale of the one-metric-ton spheres, assuming the CO₂ gas is held at standard pressure. New York City emitted one sphere’s worth of carbon dioxide every 0.58 seconds in 2010. Right: A single hour of the city’s CO₂ emissions amounts to 6,204 metric tons.

Carbon Quilt. The Carbon Visuals team imagined what it would look like if global CO₂ emissions formed a uniform layer over the surface of the earth. One day’s worth of emissions would make a layer the thickness of a piece of paper (70 microns), while one year of carbon output would blanket the planet in a 31-millimeter-thick layer. Different “patches” of the quilt can be highlighted to represent emissions from an entire industrial sector to an individual car. All images ©Carbon Visuals This article originally appeared in Conservation magazine