Video: Climate Change Will Drag Down Global Economic Output Steeply By 2100

By R. Siva Kumar - 23 Oct '15 09:01AM

The world will suffer under adverse economic consequences by 2100, according to a new study by researchers. The changes in the climate will make a bigger impact on global economies than thought earlier, Stanford University reported.

Even as richer nations might see a slight economic boost, there will only be economic drops due to rising temperatures. The policymakers will meet in Paris at the end of this year in order to come to global climate understanding, which will be valuable. By understanding the fiscal cost of future climate change, policymakers will decide how much can be invested in emissions reductions, according to HNGN.

"The data tell us that there are particular temperatures where we humans are really good at producing stuff," said Marshall Burke, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "In countries that are normally quite cold - mostly wealthy northern countries - higher temperatures are associated with faster economic growth, but only to a point. After that point, growth declines rapidly."

Records from 166 countries over a 50-year period from 1960 to 2010 were compared by experts to economic output. A hill-shaped relationship between economic output and temperature was noticed. There was a rise in the output till the 55-degree threshold, after which it showed a steep decline as temperatures continued to increase.

A model predicted that by 2100 the per-capita incomes of 77 percent of nations in the world would have come down. While global incomes could fall by 23 percent by 2100, experts theorise that richer countries with high levels of technology would be relatively protected from future climate change, however, new studies state otherwise.

"The data definitely don't provide strong evidence that rich countries are immune from the effects of hot temperatures," said co-lead author Solomon Hsiang, the Chancellor's Associate Professor of Public Policy. "Many rich countries just happen to have cooler average temperatures to start with, meaning that future warming will overall be less harmful than in poorer, hotter countries."

The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Nature.