When estimating costs that climate change will impose on societies, climate economists face a difficult barrier: They can only incorporate into models well-understood and quantified climate damages. Authors of a recent study published in Nature have identified previously unknown economic impacts associated with changes in rainfall.
While an increase in worldwide rainfall is a known consequence of global warming and of a hotter atmosphere’s holding more water vapor, most prior climate-economics modeling had concluded that this change will have an insignificant impact on economic growth. But by examining daily regional rainfall data, the researchers of the Nature paper found that these previous studies, with their lower-resolution global perspectives, have glossed over some important nuances in how local precipitation patterns will change.
One significant and previously overlooked effect lies in the increase of extreme…
