Comprehensive national climate damage assessments framework applied to the UK

Abstract

Climate change has very wide-ranging economic impacts. Comprehensive economic assessments are therefore needed, yet existing estimates remain fragmented, incomplete and deeply uncertain. Here we develop an emulation framework for a much more complete economic valuation of climate risks. We apply it to the UK, which provides a test case because of the availability of many estimates from models and expert elicitations. The approach provides channel-specific estimates, quantifies climatic and socioeconomic uncertainties, disaggregates to 406 local areas and crucially includes understudied impacts such as spillovers from other regions and missing risks. Although current warming produces welfare losses equivalent to 2% of gross domestic product (95% confidence interval of 1–4%), damages grow rapidly under the baseline scenario and reach 10% of gross domestic product (2–20%) by the end of the century. We demonstrate half the expected total damages and the greatest uncertainties come from catastrophic and missing risks.