Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors-agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor-increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations,…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: SES 1463644, award313443
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: DE-BP0004706, award314050
• BP
  Bloomberg Philanthropies

  Award: award308002