3D View of methane sources and movement around the globeNASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Welfare loss is the decrease in economic and social well being caused by extraneous factors, which in this case is global warming and climate change.
According to Princeton’s report, the loss in productivity will affect almost all regions to the south of the 30-degree latitude.
But welfare gains in economic terms — that is increasing costs of innovation, trade and migration in other parts of the world — don’t account for the overall environmental loss in the local region.
In May 2020, satellite images showed that the outbreak of fires in Siberia was 10 times worse than the year before.
In Alaska, scientists believe that zombie fires — fires that keep burning underground even after the flame on the surface have died down — will emit more carbon dioxide than ever before. These fires are hidden and can survive harsh winters and hot summers.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which tracks wildfires and their ensuring smoke, has observed that Siberia, Russia and Greenland are releasing a record amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
However, the exact number depends on the yearly discount factor like carbon emissions from forestry and non carbon emissions from greenhouse gases.
Accounting for uncertainty, the global average of welfare loss could be anywhere as high as 12% to 20%. But, this uncertainty only has an impact on the global average. The relative distribution of losses remains relatively the same.
Simply put, the hottest regions will still be on the losing side and the coldest will have something to gain.
The magnitude of the decline in productivity depends on the birth rate, migration costs, trade networks and other local characteristics.
In certain parts of Brazil, the Middle East, India and Australia, productivity is set to decline by as much as 60%, according to the Princeton’s report.
Meanwhile, in certain parts of Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland and Northern Russia, productivity doubles relative to if there was no global warming at all. Not very clear in that line. Make it a very simple sentence.
Global warming generates migration towards colder regions, which helps boost productivity.
Higher migration costs make global warming more costly for Africa, but also for northern regions which will benefit less from the influx of migrants.
Increase in migration costs also lead to significantly faster population growth. More people stay in poorer areas where they have more children.
Although the inflow of migration to the coldest regions is large in relative terms, the absolute numbers are small. Most of the extremely cold areas of the globe are only sparsely populated.
By 2200, Princeton’s paper estimates that 5.85% of the total world population will reside in a different location due to global warming.
Warming ocean water and unprecedented melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets could cause sea levels to rise by more than 3 feet by the end of the century, according to a report by the United Nations (UN).
In Asia, more than two-thirds of the population is at risk of coastline flooding by 2050 — and India’s on the front lines.
Destructive storm surges fuelled by increasingly powerful cyclones and rising seas will hit Asia hardest, according to a 2020 study published in Nature Communications.
Melting ice caps has already contributed to more than half an inch of rise in sea-levels since 1972. Half of that increase has come about in the last eight years, according to the UN report.
This is because the evolution of temperature is a global phenomenon. Trade, for the most part, is more local.
Nonetheless, trade will be affected as supply, transport and distribution chains are more vulnerable to disruptions caused by climate change.
For warmer areas, this could lead to the destruction of ports, shutting down of transport routes due to extreme weather events and increasing interruptions due to delays, according to a report by the OECD.
Other impacts — such as retreat of polar ice under warmer temperatures — can lead to opening up new trade routes in the Arctic. This would be a positive boon for areas like Alaska and Greenland.
Princeton's report asserts that a rise in the cost of innovation benefits the coldest places on Earth but hurts the warmest ones significantly.
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