Bans and phase-outs are regulatory instruments that mandate the cessation of the construction (ban) or the usage (phase out) of certain activities.

CH4 are methane emissions from solid waste, livestock, mining of hard coal and lignite, rice paddies, agriculture, and leaks from natural gas pipelines.

Climate actions and policy instruments (or “policies” in short) are policy instruments or other actions that have the explicit intent of achieving declared policy objectives to advance mitigation or are non-climate policies which are expected to have a material effect on GHG emissions. A policy is considered as adopted when it is effective in national legislation.

Climate actions and policies are divided into three types:

• Sectoral policies are defined as policies that can be constrained to or are designed to apply to a specific source or economic sector.

• Cross-sectoral policies refer to policies that cut across more than one emission’s source or sector. These are overarching policy areas to mitigate or remove domestic GHG emissions that cannot be easily attributed to a specific sector refer to policies that cut across more than one emission’s source or sector.

• International policies refer to policy commitments associated with international covenants or agreements where more than one country participates.

Climate-related extreme weather events are defined as a weather event resulting in 10 or more casualties, 100 or more affected people, the declaration of a state of emergency, or a call for international assistance. Climate-related weather events include meteorological (extreme temperature, fog, storm), hydrological (wave action, landslide, flood), and climatological (wildfire, glacial lake outburst, drought). EM‑DAT data covers both independent countries and dependent territories.

Coastal flooding threatens coastal regions and communities, impacting the population, built-up areas and other infrastructures. This indicator presents the annual percentage of the population exposed to coastal flooding with a 10, 25, 50 and 100-year return period. Data are expressed in percentages. Measuring population exposure to coastal flooding is possible using the World Bank coastal flood hazard maps (Muis et al., 2016), presenting a global reanalysis of storm surges and extreme sea level events based on hydrodynamic modelling.

Extreme precipitation refers to a daily precipitation that exceeds the 99th percentile value over the reference period 1981-2010. Unlike a monthly approach, used for example for extreme temperature, percentiles are computed using all wet days of the reference period (i.e., 1981-2010) because the data sample would otherwise be too small to robustly compute seasonally adjusted percentiles. It defines a wet day as a day where total precipitation is above or equal to 1 mm. Since percentiles are computed using all wet days of the reference period in a given location, this implies a different occurrence frequency between different locations.

Demand-based CO2 emissions are expressed in million metric tonnes. Demand-based emissions reflect the CO2 from energy use emitted during the various stages of production of goods and services consumed in domestic final demand, irrespective of where the stages of production occurred.

Domestic material consumption (DMC) refers to the amount of materials directly used in an economy, which refers to the apparent consumption of materials. DMC is computed as DEU minus exports plus imports.

Effective Carbon Rate (ECR) is the sum of fuel excise taxes, carbon taxes and tradeable permits that effectively put a price on carbon emissions. The Net ECR equals the ECR minus fossil fuel subsidies that decrease pre-tax fossil fuel prices.

Environmentally related taxes are compulsory, unrequited payments to government levied on tax bases deemed to be of environmental relevance, i.e., taxes that have a tax base with a proven, specific negative impact on the environment.

Fire danger is estimated with the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), adjusted to account for biomass availability. Fire danger is defined as FWI values of 5 or higher, indicating very high or extreme fire danger.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions refer to the sum of GHGs that have direct effects on climate change and are considered responsible for a major part of global warming: carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃). They refer to GHGs emitted within the national territory and may include or exclude emissions and removals from land use change and forestry (LUCF). They do not cover international transactions of emission reduction units or certified emission reductions. Greenhouse gas emission estimates are divided into main sectors, which are groupings of related processes, sources and sinks.

Icing days are defined as days where the daily maximum temperature does not exceed 0°C.

Land exposure to cyclones: Category 1 cyclones on the Saffir-Simpson scale are described as "very dangerous winds that will produce some damage". Higher categories cover extensive, devastating and catastrophic damage respectively. The return period is the average or estimated time that a specific climate-related hazard is likely to recur.

Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal: In Art. 2, the Paris Agreement, seeking to strengthen the global response to climate change, reaffirms the goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.

Paris Agreement mitigation goal: In Art. 4, the Paris Agreement establishes binding commitments by all Parties to prepare, communicate and maintain a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and to pursue domestic measures to achieve them. It also prescribes that Parties shall communicate their NDCs every 5 years and provide information necessary for clarity and transparency. To set a firm foundation for higher ambition, each successive NDC will represent a progression beyond the previous one and reflect the highest possible ambition. Developed countries should continue to take the lead by undertaking absolute economy-wide reduction targets, while developing countries should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move toward economy-wide targets over time in the light of different national circumstances.

Policy approaches define countries’ climate policy landscape. Policy approaches are the combination of countries’ climate action (i.e., the number and stringency of its policies) and the types (e.g. market-based instruments, non market-based instruments) and areas (e.g. sectoral policies, cross-sectoral policies) of climate policies.

Policy instruments are institutional vehicles or tools through which governments facilitate the implementation of domestic and international objectives.

• Market-based instruments are policy instruments that use markets, prices and/or other monetary means to provide incentives for producers and consumers to reduce or eliminate environmental and other externalities. Market-based instruments covered by the CAPMF include explicit (carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes) and implicit carbon pricing instruments (fuel excise taxes) amongst others.

• Non market-based instruments are instruments that work through the imposition of certain obligations or by installing non-monetary incentives to change behaviour (e.g. directly regulated by the government such as standards, information instruments, voluntary approaches).

Policy stringency is degree to which climate actions and policies incentivise or enable GHG emissions mitigation at home or abroad. In the CAPMF it is measured as a relative concept by assigning a stringency score between 0 (not stringent) and 10 (very stringent) for each policy variable based on the in-sample distribution across all countries and years of the policy variables’ level (e.g. tax rate, emission limit value, government expenditure).

Population and built-up area exposure to river flooding: River floods exposure indicators were computed using JRC River Flood Hazard Maps for Europe and the Mediterranean Basin region, and for the World (Dottori, 2021[69]). The maps depict flood prone areas for river flood events for six different flood frequencies (from 1-in-10-years to 1-in-500-years). Cell values on these maps indicate the water depth (in m). For countries located in Europe and around the Mediterranean Basin, the regional flood hazard maps were used, as the spatial resolution is higher (100 m) than the global maps (1 km). For the remaining countries, the global maps were used. To get flood prone areas, a threshold of 1 cm was applied on the water depth. The return period is the average or estimated time that a specific climate-related hazard is likely to recur.

Hot days are defined as those during which daily maximum temperature surpasses 35°C. Due to the resolution of the raw data, it is possible that heat stress for small islands is slightly underestimated. There are also several additional indicators to describe heat stress (such as the UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index), which also takes moisture, wind and solar radiation into account); these should be taken into account for a more thorough analysis of exposure to heat for single countries.

Tropical nights are defined as nights where the minimum temperature does not fall below 20°C. Due to the resolution of the raw data, it is possible that heat stress for small islands is slightly underestimated. There are also several additional indicators to describe heat stress (such as the UTCI), which also takes moisture, wind and solar radiation into account); these should be taken into account for a more thorough analysis of exposure to heat for single countries.

Production-based CO2 intensity is calculated as CO2 emissions per capita (tonnes/person). Included are CO2 emissions from combustion of coal, oil, natural gas and other fuels. The estimates of CO2 emissions are obtained from the IEA’s database of CO2 emissions from fuel combustion. Default methods and emission factors are given in the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

River floods exposure indicators were computed using JRC River Flood Hazard Maps for Europe and the Mediterranean Basin region, and for the World (Dottori et al., 2021). The maps depict flood prone areas for river flood events for six different flood frequencies (from 1-in-10-years to 1-in-500-years). Cell values on these maps indicate the water depth (in m). For countries located in Europe and around the Mediterranean Basin, the regional flood hazard maps were used, as the spatial resolution is higher (100 m) than the global maps (1 km). For the remaining countries, the global maps were used. To get flood prone areas, a threshold of 1 cm was applied on the water depth. The return period is the average or estimated time that a specific climate-related hazard is likely to recur.

Soil moisture anomaly in cropland is a suitable indicator for monitoring the intensity of droughts and shows similar performances in identifying droughts to the Standardized Precipitation Index. Copernicus CDS ERA5-Land monthly averaged data and Copernicus global land cover data is used to calculate average cropland soil moisture anomaly.

Total energy supply (TES), or total primary energy supply, is made up of production + imports - exports - international marine bunkers - international aviation bunkers ± stock changes. Primary energy comprises coal, peat and peat products, oil shale, natural gas, crude oil and oil products, nuclear, and renewable energy (bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind). Electricity trade is included in total energy supply but excluded from the calculation of the breakdown by source.