Guest post: Cost of extreme weather due to climate change is severely underestimated
Over the past decade, a compelling body of evidence has linked a range of extreme weather events to human-caused climate change.
This area of research – known as “event attribution” – provides a means for climate scientists to examine how the severity and frequency of weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts and storms, are changing as greenhouse gas concentrations rise.
In a pair of new journal papers, we have attempted to open up a new avenue for quantifying the “attributable costs” of weather-related disasters. We focus on recent droughts and floods in New Zealand and the landfall of Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017.
Using event attribution as the scientific basis for quantifying how extreme weather has changed, we have been examining the links between changes in extreme weather and their economic consequences.
If we can quantify the contribution from climate change to an extreme weather event and we can also know the cost of the associated disaster, then we can put a financial figure on the climate change component of those costs. These calculations then provide us with the price tag of climate change, through its impact on extreme weather events.
§ Quantifying attributable costs
In the two studies, both published in the journal Climatic Change, we look at droughts and floods in New Zealand during the decade 2007-17 and the landfall of Hurricane Harvey in Texas in August 2017.
The New Zealand Treasury estimated that two droughts in 2007 and 2013 jointly reduced GDP in New Zealand by around NZ$4.8bn (US$3.4bn in 2017). Using previously published methods, which used climate models to estimate changes in the types of weather patterns typical of severe New Zealand drought, we estimate that around NZ$800m (US$568m) of this cost is due to climate change.
We also analysed 12 extreme rainfall events, which contributed a total of around NZ$470m (US$334m) in insurance losses, by applying techniques used elsewhere. This involved running regional climate models thousands of times over, both with and without human influences, and looking at how often the events in question occurred in each case. Based on this, we estimate that around NZ$140m (US$99m) of those insurance losses were attributable to human influence on the climate.
The two sets of costs are not directly comparable – one measures reductions in economic performance and the other measures insured losses. The main insight is that event attribution is able to show that climate change is already causing significant losses to New Zealand. Climate change is not only a future problem, but it is costing us here and now.
§ Using attributable costs
The main significance of our new work is less in the exact numbers and more in the ability to link, more forensically, human influence on the climate to the economic impacts of disasters.
There are several ways in which this line of research could be used:
1. By central banks and treasuries as they are increasingly asked to consider climate change-related risks. This line of evidence can provide innovative ways of analysing the problem and should help them deal with dynamic, climate-related fiscal and monetary risks.
2. By insurance companies and investors that may find attributable cost techniques useful as an additional line of evidence regarding the way their risks are changing.
3. By policymakers tasked with assessing the social cost of carbon; a number that may guide national emission targets. The forensic approach suggests that traditional, IAM-based social cost of carbon estimates are too low.
4. By parties wishing to pursue arguments regarding “loss and damage” arising from climate change, potentially including lawsuits. Loss and damage refers to the societal and financial costs of climate impacts that can no longer be avoided. The idea of developed countries – who are most responsible for climate change – compensating developing nations for these damages is an ongoing part of international climate negotiations.
5. By investors as they consider divestment, especially in light of (3) and (4). If the social cost of carbon is currently underestimated, and if our new approach can potentially lead to legal actions, then these constitute very powerful arguments for firms to accelerate their divestment initiatives.
With colleagues from around the world we are trying to develop further our approach. This involves thinking through methodological issues, clarifying the economic consequences of weather and climate events, and trying to assess which events are amenable to event attribution and which are not. There is much to do and much to learn, but much to gain from doing so.
In the long run, the integration of quantitative social science and climate change event attribution will help decision-makers have a richer, better and more accurate understanding of the effects of climate change on the economy.
By looking as far along the chain from emissions to impacts as we can, we provide fresh evidence for decision-makers to consider as they grapple with the climate change challenge. By thinking through the economic consequences of human influence on extreme events, we think this can help move event attribution from the news cycle to the boardroom.