Time to improve the IPCC estimates on the economic cost of anthropogenic climate change

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What is the price we’ll have to pay for climate change? It is possible to estimate with higher precision. Photo: Luis Paredes

We need a better understanding of how climate change is going to impact and disrupt the world economy. That can be achieved through calculations based on combining tools of dynamical systems theory and statistical physics. This combination of methods is known to improve the assessment of the influence of tipping points in chaotic systems such as climate and economics. And the approach has clearly contributed to the understanding of the Earth system throughout the last 20 years.

In a review, Michael Ghil, Distinguished Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the University of California at Los Angeles, part of the TiPES project now shows why and how it is time to move on and assess the economic and social impacts of climate catastrophes with similar analyses.

This should lead to smaller uncertainties in estimating the global costs of climate change by the IPCC and thus an improved basis for mitigating the consequences of future climate changes.