Researchers slightly lower study's estimate of drop in global income due to climate change

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The authors of a study that examined climate change's potential effect on the global economy said Wednesday that data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years.

The researchers at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, writing in the journal Nature in 2024, had forecast a 19% drop in global income by 2050. Their revised analysis puts the figure at 17%.

The authors also said in their original work that there was a 99% chance that, by midcentury, it would cost more to fix damage from climate change than it would cost to build resilience. Their new analysis, not yet peer-reviewed, lowered that figure to 91%.

The Associated Press reported on the original study. Nature posted a retraction of it Wednesday.

The researchers cited data inaccuracies in the first paper, particularly with underlying economic data for Uzbekistan between 1995 and 1999 that had a large influence on the results, and that their analysis had underestimated statistical uncertainty.

Max Kotz, one of the study’s authors, told the AP that the heart of the study is unchanged: Climate change will be enormously damaging to the world economy if unchecked, and that the impact will hit hardest in the lowest-income areas that contribute the fewest emissions driving the planet's warming.

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School who wasn't involved with the research, said the thrust of the Potsdam Institute's work remains the same “no matter which part of the range the true figure will be.”

“Climate change already hits home, quite literally. Home insurance premiums across the U.S. have already seen, in part, a doubling over the past decade alone,” Wagner said. “Rapidly accumulating climate risks will only make the numbers go up even more.”

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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at [email protected].

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