Super-pollutant
A common label for pollutants with strong climate effects, often over short timescales.
Example
Methane is frequently described this way because its warming influence per unit mass is high over twenty years.
The catch
The label does not give a precise potency or cover identical lifetimes for all substances.
Related terms
Methane, Anthropogenic methane, Biogenic methane, Flaring, Fossil methane, Fugitive emissions
In more depth
Super-pollutant, explained.
Super-pollutant is a campaigning and policy label, and scientific assessments use more precise categories. IPCC AR6, for example, uses short-lived climate forcers, a category that also covers aerosols which cool the climate. The overlap with the term short-lived climate pollutant is large but incomplete. Because of its potency per tonne, nitrous oxide appears on some lists of super-pollutants even though it lingers for a long time.
The label is useful for drawing attention to measures that slow warming quickly, often with health benefits. Policy packages built around it typically combine methane rules, HFC phase-downs and cleaner cooking or diesel standards, each with its own evidence base. In a claim, the label is a starting point. The named substances and the metric used to compare them carry the information.