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The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change

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Newman, Rebecca, Noy, Ilan·2023·Nature Communications
DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-41888-1PMC PMC10541421

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Abstract

Extreme weather events lead to significant adverse societal costs. Extreme Event Attribution (EEA), a methodology that examines how anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions had changed the occurrence of specific extreme weather events, allows us to quantify the climate change-induced component of these costs. We collect data from all available EEA studies, combine these with data on the socio-economic costs of these events and extrapolate for missing data to arrive at an estimate of the global costs of extreme weather attributable to climate change in the last twenty years. We find that US $$\$$$ $ 143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. Our results suggest that the frequently cited estimates of the economic costs of climate change arrived at by using Integrated Assessment Models may be substantially underestimated.

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Authors
Newman, R., & Noy, I.
Affiliations
  • Reserve Bank of New Zealand (NZ)
  • Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
Corresponding author
Noy, Ilan
ORCID
Noy, Ilan
Venue
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2023-09-29
Volume
14
Issue
1
Pages
6103-6103
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-41888-1
PMC
PMC10541421
OpenAlex
W4387167601
Cited by
575
References
6
Citations by year
2026: 201 · 2025: 239 · 2024: 128 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 1
FWCI
64.49
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Research Square (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (Endeavour Whakahura)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Environmental Impact
Keywords
extreme weather events, climate change attribution, socioeconomic costs, economic costs of climate change, extreme event attribution, greenhouse gas emissions, human mortality, integrated assessment models

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