AND the first analysis estimating its direct costs has been released extreme weather conditions caused by global warming. The publication was made on September 29, 2023 and was published in one of the most authoritative journals in the field, Nature Communication, with the title: The global cost of extreme weather events attributable to climate change
For many years there has been debate about the real price to pay when it comes to climate change. However, no study had ever analyzed the situation globally.
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In Italy, some scholars had calculated this price based on what we can define as the “vulnerability of business and industry”, especially after the events that hit the city of Bomporto, in Modena, in 2014. In other words, the cost was quantified of the damages suffered and the cost of adaptation in the affected areas.
The study is also very interesting Green Peace had carried out in 2021, covering the time period between 2013 and 2019 and quantifying the expenditure at around 20.3 million euros per year. The report is called: “How much is the climate crisis costing Italy?”
Another study carried out by the European Environment Agency then analyzed the situation at Community level over a longer period: from 1980 to 2019, finding that members of the European Economic Area (EEA), in that time period, lost overall 446 billion. In other words, 1.1 billion euros per year, about 3% of the GDP of the countries analyzed. The most affected? Germany, Italy, France and United Kingdom.
In the study The global cost of extreme weather events attributable to climate change, conducted by researchers at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, It is quantified globally over a period of 20 years and the calculated amount is equal to 143 billion dollars per year (135 billion euros). That’s $16 million every hour.
To estimate the global costs of extreme weather events, the researchers combined data collected from Extreme Event Attribution (EEA) reports and economic cost data obtained in turn, using integrated assessment models.
The figure of 143 billion breaks down as follows: ⅓ refers to the destruction of property and ⅔ to the loss of human life. For the latter figure, the statistical value of $7 million per life lost (an average of the figures used by the US and UK governments) was used.
About 64% of the damage was caused by storms, 16% by heat waves, 20% by floods and droughts, and 2% by wildfires.
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