iam-units 2025.10.13

Unit definitions for integrated-assessment research

© 2020-2025 IAM-units authors; licensed under the GNU GPL version 3.

The file definitions.txt gives Pint-compatible definitions of energy, climate, and related units to supplement the SI and other units included in Pint’s default_en.txt. These definitions are used by:

• the IIASA Energy Program MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM integrated assessment model (IAM),

• the Python package pyam for analysis and visualization of integrated-assessment scenarios (see pyam.IamDataFrame.convert_unit() for details)

and may be used for research in integrated assessment, energy systems, transportation, or other, related fields.

Please open a GitHub issue or pull request to:

• Add more units to definitions.txt.

• Add your usage of iam-units to this README.

• Request or contribute additional features.

Usage

iam_units.registry is a pint.UnitRegistry object with the definitions from definitions.txt loaded:

>>> from iam_units import registry

# Parse an energy unit defined by iam-units
>>> qty = registry('1.2 tce')
>>> qty
1.2 <Unit('tonne_of_coal_equivalent')>

>>> qty.to('GJ')
29.308 <Unit('gigajoule')>

To make the registry from this package the default:

>>> import pint
>>> pint.set_application_registry(registry)

# Now used by default for pint top-level classes and methods
>>> pint.Quantity('1.2 tce')
1.2 <Unit('tonne_of_coal_equivalent')>

Environment variables

The package responds to two optional environment variables:

IAM_UNITS_CACHE

iam-units caches the created registry using pint’s caching mechanism. If set, this variable must contain the path of a directory for the cache. If not set, a default path is used.

IAM_UNITS_CURRENCY

If set, this variable must be a string like “EXC,2005”. The two parts, separated by a comma (“,”), are separated and passed as the method and period arguments to configure_currency() (see below) when iam-units is imported. If not set, the function is not called.

Warnings

iam_units overwrites Pint’s default definitions in the following cases:

pint default	iam_units	Note
‘kt’ = knot [velocity]	‘kt’ = 1000 metric tons	‘kt’ is commonly used for emissions in the IAM-context.

Technical details

Emissions and GWP

The function convert_gwp() converts from mass (or mass-related units) of one specific greenhouse gas (GHG) species to an equivalent quantity of second species, based on global warming potential (GWP) metrics. The supported species are listed in species.txt and the variable iam_units.emissions.SPECIES.

The metrics have names like <IPCC report>GWP<years>, where <years> is the time period over which heat absorption was assessed. The supported metrics are listed in the variable iam_units.emissions.METRICS.

>>> qty = registry('3.5e3 t').to('Mt')
>>> qty
3.5 <Unit('megametric_ton')>

# Convert from mass of N2O to GWP-equivalent mass of CO2
>>> convert_gwp('AR4GWP100', qty, 'N2O', 'CO2')
0.9275 <Unit('megametric_ton')>

# Using a different metric
>>> convert_gwp('AR5GWP100', qty, 'N2O', 'CO2')
1.085 <Unit('megametric_ton')>

The function also accepts input with the commonly-used combination of mass (or related) units and the identity of a particular GHG species:

# Expression combining magnitude, units, *and* GHG species
>>> qty = '3.5 Mt N2O / year'

# Input species is determined from *qty*
>>> convert_gwp('AR5GWP100', qty, 'CO2')
1.085 <Unit('megametric_ton / year')>

Strictly, the original species is not a unit but a nominal property; see the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) used in the SI. To avoid ambiguity, code handling GHG quantities should also track and output these nominal properties, including:

1. Original species.

2. Species in which GWP-equivalents are expressed (e.g. CO₂ or C)

3. GWP metric used to convert (1) to (2).

To aid with this, the function format_mass() is provided to re-assemble strings that include the GHG species or other information:

# Perform a conversion
>>> qty = convert_gwp('AR5GWP100', '3.5 Mt N2O / year', 'CO2e')
>>> qty
927.5 <Unit('megametric_ton / year')>

# Format a string with species and metric info after the mass units of *qty*
>>> format_mass(qty, 'CO₂-e (AR5)', spec=':~')
'Mt CO₂-e (AR5) / a'

See Pint’s formatting documentation for values of the spec argument.

Data sources

The GWP unit definitions are generated from the package globalwarmingpotentials. The version of that package used to generate the definitions is stated in the variable iam_units.emissions.GWP_VERSION.

See DEVELOPING.rst for details on updating the definitions.

Currency

iam_units defines deflators for:

• USD (United States dollar) for annual periods from 2000 to 2022 inclusive.

• EUR (Euro) for the periods 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 only.

These can be used via pint-compatible unit expressions like USD_2019 that combine the ISO 4217 alphabetic code with the period.

To enable conversions between different currencies, use the function configure_currency():

>>> configure_currency(method="EXC", period="2005")

# Then, for example
>>> qty = registry("42.1 USD_2020")
>>> qty
42.1 <Unit('USD_2020')>

>>> qty.to("EUR_2005")
26.022132012144635 <Unit('EUR_2005')>

Currently iam_units only supports:

• period-average exchange rates for annual periods (method=”EXC”);

• period=”2005”; and

• the two currencies mentioned above.

Up to v2025.9.12, configure_currency("EXC", 2005) was called automatically.

Contributions that extend the supported currencies, methods, and periods are welcome.

Tests and development

Use pytest iam_units --verbose to run the test suite included in the submodule iam_units.test_all. See DEVELOPING.rst for further details.