Model Predicts Economic Damage from Climate Change to be Greatest in the South in the US

Academics have modeled the effects of climate change on six economic sectors using a model they developed called Spatial Empirical Adaptive Global-to-Local Assessment System (SEAGLAS).  The model combines forty-four climate models and model surrogates to look at the future economic effects of climate change.  The study, recently published in the journal Science, builds on the work outlined in the authors’ 2015 book, “Economic Risks of Climate Change.”

SEAGLAS assessed the combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor and found that every rise of  +1°C in mean global temperature costs 1.2% of gross domestic product.  SEAGLAS also found that the geographic distribution of economic damage in the United States is unequal, with the south experiencing a greater proportion of economic damaged.  The authors also concluded that income equality is predicted to increased with climate change as wealth transfer northward and westward.

References

Hsiang, S., Kopp, R., Jina, A., Rising, J., Delgado, M., Mohan, S., … Houser, T. (2017). Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States. Science, 356(6345), 1362. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4369

Houser, T., Hsiang, S., Kopp, R., & Larsen, K. (2015). Economic risks of climate change: an American prospectus. Columbia University Press.

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