Impact of Climate Change on Storm damage: An extra $53 billion per year

If the climate remains stable, global tropical damage from cyclones would hit $56 billion by 2100—double the current damage of $26 billion per year.  But adding in the probable impact of climate change, the turn of the century will see additional damages that will cost another $53 billion per year – for a total of $109 billion.

That’s according to Yale and MIT researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change.

Greater vulnerability to cyclones is expected to increase global tropical damage to $56 billion by 2100—double the current damage—from the current rate of $26 billion per year if the present climate remains stable.

Climate change is predicted to result in additional damages that will cost another $53 billion.

The United States and China will be hardest hit, incurring $25 billion and $15 billion of the additional damages from climate change, respectively, amounting to 75 percent of the global damages caused by climate change. Small islands, especially in the Caribbean, will also be hit hard, suffering the highest damages per unit of GDP.

The research reveals that more intense storms will become more frequent with climate change. “The biggest storms cause most of the damage,” said Robert Mendelsohn, the lead economist on the project. “With the present climate, almost 93 percent of tropical cyclone damage is caused by only 10 percent of the storms. Warming will increase the frequency of these high-intensity storms at least in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean basins, causing most of the increase in damage.”

The authors based their estimates on a future global population of 9 billion and an annual increase of approximately 3 percent in gross world product until 2100. “More people making a lot more income will put more capital in harm’s way,” he said.

Tropical cyclones today cause $26 billion in global damages, which is 4 percent of gross world product. North America and East Asia account for 88 percent of these damages, because these regions have powerful storms and well-developed coastlines.

The paper, “The Impact of Climate Change on Global Tropical Cyclone Damage,” is available at www.nature.com. It used a tropical cyclone integrated assessment model that was developed with Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. “The paper demonstrates how to integrate the atmospheric science of tropical cyclones and economics,” said Emanuel.