Economic costs of extratropical storms under climate change : an application of FUND

Abstract

Extratropical cyclones have attracted some attention in climate policy circles as a possible significant damage factor of climate change. This study conducts an assessment of economic impacts of increased storm activities under climate change with the integrated assessment model FUND 3.4. In the base case, the direct economic damage of enhanced storms due to climate change amounts to $2.4 billion globally (approximately 35% of the total economic loss of storms at present) at the year 2100, while its ratio to the world GDP is 0.0007%. The paper also shows various sensitivity runs exhibiting up to 4 times the level of damage relative to the base run.