Estimates of the global economic impacts of observed climate change during the 20th century obtained by applying five impact functions of different integrated assessment models (IAMs) are separated into their main natural and anthropogenic components. The estimates of the costs that can be attributed to natural variability factors and to the anthropogenic intervention with the climate system in general tend to show that: 1) during the first half of the century, the amplitude of the impacts associated with natural variability is considerably larger than that produced by anthropogenic factors and the effects of natural variability fluctuated between being negative and positive. These non-monotonic impacts are mostly determined by the low-frequency variability and the persistence of the climate system; 2) IAMs do not agree on the sign (nor on the magnitude) of the impacts of anthropogenic forcing but indicate that they steadily grew over the first part of the century, rapidly accelerated since the mid 1970's, and decelerated during the first decade of the 21st century. This deceleration is accentuated by the existence of interaction effects between natural variability and natural and anthropogenic forcing. The economic impacts of anthropogenic forcing range in the tenths of percentage of the world GDP by the end of the 20th century; 3) the impacts of natural forcing are about one order of magnitude lower than those associated with anthropogenic forcing and are dominated by the solar forcing; 4) the interaction effects between natural and anthropogenic factors can importantly modulate how impacts actually occur, at least for moderate increases in external forcing. Human activities became dominant drivers of the estimated economic impacts at the end of the 20th century, producing larger impacts than those of low-frequency natural variability. Some of the uses and limitations of IAMs are discussed.
Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico;Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom;Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;CESifo, Munich, Germany;Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Recommended Citation:
Francisco Estrada,Richard S. J. Tol,Wouter J. W. Botzen. Global economic impacts of climate variability and change during the 20th century[J]. PLOS ONE,2017-01-01,12(2)