Linking regional economic impacts of temperature-related disasters to underlying climatic hazards

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Vidur Mithal - , University of Hamburg, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (Author)
  • Jana Sillmann - , University of Hamburg, Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) (Author)
  • Jakob Zscheischler - , Chair of Data Analytics in Hydro Sciences, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)

Abstract

Temperature-induced disasters lead to major human and economic damage, but the relationship between their climatic drivers and impacts is difficult to quantify. In part, this is due to a lack of data with suitable resolution, scale and coverage on impacts and disaster occurrence. Here, we address this gap using new datasets on subnational sector-disaggregated economic productivity and geo-coded disaster locations to quantify the role of climatic hazards on economic impacts of temperature-induced disasters at a subnational scale. Using a regression-based approach, we find that the regional economic impacts of heat-related disasters are most strongly linked to the daily maximum temperature (TXx) index. This effect is largest in the agricultural sector (6.37% regional growth rate reduction per standard deviation increase in TXx anomaly), being almost twice as strong as in the manufacturing sector (3.98%), service sector (3.64%), and whole economy (3.64%). We also highlight the role of compound climatic hazards in worsening impacts, showing that in the agriculture sector, compound hot-and-dry conditions amplify the impacts of heat-related disasters on growth rates by a factor of two. In contrast, in the service and manufacturing sectors, stronger impacts are found to be associated with compound hot and wet conditions. These findings present a first step in understanding the relationship between temperature-related hazards and regional economic impacts using a multi-event database, and highlight the need for further research to better understand the complex mechanisms including compound effects underlying these impacts across sectors.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number124010
JournalEnvironmental research letters
Volume19
Issue number12
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-6045-1629/work/197321865