The Economic Costs of Hurricane Harvey Attributable to Climate Change — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
  1. Schedule
  2. 28. Understanding historical climate trends and the current climate state in the context of anthropogenic climate change
  3. The Economic Costs of Hurricane Harvey Attributable to Climate Change

The Economic Costs of Hurricane Harvey Attributable to Climate Change (#112)

Dave Frame 1 , Michael Wehner 2 , Ilan Noy 1 , Suzanne Rosier 3
  1. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, ---, New Zealand
  2. Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Berkeley, CA, USA
  3. NIWA, Wellington, New Zealand

Building on previous work in New Zealand, this talk will present analysis of "attributable costs" associated with Hurricane Harvey, one of the costliest tropical cyclones in history. Results indicate that the ‘fraction of attributable risk’ for Harvey was likely about at least a third with a best estimate of three quarters. Combining this fraction with a best estimate of damages from Harvey assessed at about US$90Bn, yields a best estimate for the damages attributable to human influence on  climate of US$67Bn.  This ‘bottom-up’ estimate of climate change damages is far higher than those inferred from  ‘top-down’ estimates, such as those implied by prominent integrated assessment models and subsequently used by regulatory assessments.

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