Heatwaves caused by climate change have cost the global economy more than 16 trillion euros since 1990, according to a study.

Heat waves caused changing of the climate – increasingly frequent, prolonged and intense – will not be a problem of the future, they are already there: between 1992 and 2013 alone, extreme heat caused more than 16 billion euros in damage to the global economy.

In addition, according to a study conducted by Dartmouth University (New Hampshire, USA) and published this Friday in the journal Scientific achievementsthe poorest countries with the lowest carbon emissions have been hardest hit by the effects of these extreme events.

The study, which is one of the first to look specifically at how much heatwaves affect production volumes, concludes that so far, the cost of changing of the climate were completely underestimated.

To make the calculations, the team combined economic data from regions around the world with the average temperature of the five hottest days of the year in each region.

They found that between 1992 and 2013, heatwaves statistically coincided with economic fluctuations, in which more than 16 billion euros were lost due to the impact of high temperatures on human health, productivity and agricultural production.

Given these data, the authors call for “immediate” measures to protect the population during heat waves, especially in the hottest and most economically vulnerable countries in the world.

In addition, “the costs of such adaptation measures should be assessed not only in terms of price, but also relative to the cost of inaction. Our study has already shown the cost of inaction,” warns Christopher Callahan, lead author of the study and researcher at Dartmouth.

Who is most affected by extreme heat?

The results of the study also highlight issues of equity and climate inequality.

The study denounces that the economic costs of extreme heat have been and will be borne by the “disproportionately” poor countries (tropical and southern), which, moreover, contributed least to global warming.

According to them, while economic losses due to heat waves averaged 1.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world’s richest regions, low-income regions lost 6.7% of GDP per capita. .

The study also shows that, to some extent, some regions of Europe and North America, which are among the world’s largest emitters of carbon, could theoretically benefit economically from periods of warmer days.

“We are faced with a situation where the perpetrators of global warming and because of changes in extreme heat, they have more resources to be resilient to these changes, and in some rare cases, they could benefit from it,” says co-author Justin Mankin.

There is, the study adds, “an enormous transfer of international wealth from the world’s poorest countries to the richest through changing of the climateand this transfer must be cancelled.”

Mankin and Callahan conclude that the world’s largest emitters should pay most of the bills for adapting to heat extremes while also helping low-income countries develop low-carbon economies.

Sharing the cost of adaptation measures will benefit everyone, Mankin concludes.

(EFE)