A new study finds that accounting for the long-term effects of tropical cyclones increases the global social cost of carbon by more than 20%. This increase is due to the predicted increase in damage in major countries due to global warming. The study highlights that current estimates ignore these long-term economic effects and underestimate the true costs of climate change.
Extreme events like tropical cyclones have an immediate impact but have long-term effects on society. New research published in the journal Nature Communications. Considering the long-term effects of these storms, the global societal carbon cost will increase by more than 20 percent compared to estimates currently used in policy assessments. This increase is primarily due to the predicted increase in damage from tropical cyclones to the major economies of India, the United States, China, Taiwan, and Japan due to global warming.
“Our analysis shows that severe tropical cyclones have the power to slow a country’s economic development by more than a decade. Global warming is expected to increase the proportion of the most intense tropical cyclones. “This increases the likelihood that the economy will not be able to fully recover between storms,” explains Hazem Krishen, author and scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) at the time of the survey. Therefore, long-term effects such as reduced economic growth caused by tropical cyclones can have an even greater negative impact on economic development than the direct economic damage caused by the storm.
The so-called social carbon cost is an estimate of the future cost to society in dollars of emitting an additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This important indicator is widely used in policy evaluation because it allows comparisons between the costs of climate change to society and the costs of climate mitigation measures. “However, the long-term effects of extreme events have not been taken into account so far, so current societal carbon cost estimates reflect only a portion of the real costs. The costs are probably even higher than currently estimated, which means that the benefits of climate mitigation are underestimated,” says co-author Franziska Piontek from PIK.
Hotter climate, more intense tropical cyclones, and rising costs
For the study, scientists analyzed the economic damage caused by these storms in 41 tropical cyclone-prone countries between 1981 and 2015 and made predictions about future global warming scenarios. did. In contrast to previous studies, these studies accounted for most of the long-term negative effects of these storms on economic development. The researchers found that these impacts increase the social cost of carbon by more than 20 percent globally (from US$173 to US$212 per tonne of carbon dioxide) and by 40 percent in the tropical cyclone-prone countries analyzed. I found that it has increased. Estimates of social carbon costs currently used in policy evaluations.
“When it comes to extreme events, the emphasis is on the immediate economic damage. However, these are important to inform society about the real costs of climate change and the climate impacts that can be avoided with effective climate action. It is equally important to better quantify the overall cost of events,” concludes study author Christian Otto of PIK.
Reference: “Social Costs of Tropical Cyclones” November 23, 2023 Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43114-4
Source: scitechdaily.com
