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handle is hein.crs/govyfy0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Cogesoa Resarc Servic 0 March 28, 2019 Projected Economic Impacts of Climate Change As mandated by Congress, the U.S. Global Change Research Program produces regular National Climate Assessment (NCA) reports on the state of scientific knowledge about climate change and its effects on human and natural systems in the United States. Volume II of NCA4, published in 2018, examines the contributions of individual economic studies, in order to develop consensus conclusions from across the body of climate impacts literature. According to NCA4, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century provided continued growth in emissions at historic rates. The findings of the NCA4, and those of previous reports, have raised concerns in Congress about the projected economic impacts and questions about the study methods used to derive these projections. Studies projecting the economic impacts of climate change vary in their scope, methodology, and the intended applications of their findings. Some focus on the effects of one aspect of climate change upon a single type of economic activity (e.g., effects of temperature and carbon dioxide fertilization on corn yields), while others study the effects across a more comprehensive array of market and non-market activities. Recent research, however, provides detailed projections of future impacts of climate change across a variety of sectors of the U.S. economy. Projections of the economic impacts of climate change have been cited by some Members of Congress to advance climate-related legislation, and have raised questions and concerns about their interpretation and use in policymaking. This product provides an abbreviated overview of climate impacts research, recent projections from the literature, and considerations in interpreting these. In this context, climate impacts are defined as the projected physical and economic effects of climate change, both positive and negative. This product does not discuss the social cost of carbon or similar metrics, which estimate the net present costs associated with emitting additional greenhouse gases (see CRS In Focus IF10625, Social Costs of Carbon/Greenhouse Gases: Issues for Congress). Status of U.S. Climate Impacts Research While scientific understanding of the physical effects of climate change is supported by a large body of research, the methods for projecting the likely physical and economic effects for specific regions are relatively new and imprecise. Development of these methods remains an area of active research. Methods of projecting the economic effects of climate change have been in development since the early 1980s. Early attempts to quantify more comprehensive economic effects largely did so on a global scale. Since the early 2000s, advancements in the underlying physical and economic research, data availability, and computing power have allowed the development of more granular approaches, capable of estimating the sum of a wider array of sectoral effects at the national, regional, or even county level. These methods are complex, drawing together insights from a range of disciplines, including climate science, economics, and statistics. According to a 2017 report of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a small but growing number of researchers are developing the methods used to project the potential economic effects of climate change within the United States. To date, these methods have been primarily applied to certain economic sectors for which data are readily available and evidence for the relationship between climate and impacts is considered robust. These include human health, labor, energy, agriculture, water resources, infrastructure, and coastal property. Currently, no studies purport to produce a comprehensive estimate of the effects of climate change on the entirety of the U.S. economy. Recent Projections in the Literature Two studies, cited in Volume II of the NCA4, provide the most detailed projections to date of the economic effects of climate change across multiple sectors in the United States. These are: * A 2017 report of the Climate Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA) project, coordinated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with input from other federal agencies; and * A 2017 study by Hsiang et al., published in Science, and building upon the American Climate Prospectus, a 2014 report of the Rhodium Group. These studies vary in methodology, economic sectors that are included, and choice of metric to report results. Consequently, their findings are not directly comparable. The 2017 CIRA report provides national and regional economic impact projections for the analyzed sectors in 2050 and 2090 under two emissions trajectories. The report analyzes 22 climate impact sectors within six broad categories: health, infrastructure, electricity, water resources, agriculture, and ecosystems. Results are presented in real 2015 dollars for each sector, but are not aggregated into a single economy-wide estimate. Under a high emissions scenario with limited adaptation, net losses in labor, extreme temperature mortality, and coastal property are estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars https://crsreports.congr

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