Double benefit of limiting global warming for tropical cyclone exposure

Tobias Geiger (), Johannes Gütschow, David N. Bresch, Kerry Emanuel and Katja Frieler
Additional contact information
Tobias Geiger: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association
Johannes Gütschow: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association
David N. Bresch: Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich
Kerry Emanuel: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Katja Frieler: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association

Nature Climate Change, 2021, vol. 11, issue 10, 861-866

Abstract: Abstract Tropical cyclone (TC) impacts are expected to worsen under continued global warming and socio-economic development. Here we combine TC simulations with an impact model to quantify country-level population exposure to TC winds for different magnitudes of global mean surface temperature increase and future population distributions. We estimate an annual global TC exposure increase of 26% (33 million people) for a 1 °C increase in global mean surface temperature, assuming present-day population. The timing of warming matters when additionally accounting for population change, with global population projected to peak around mid-century and decline thereafter. A middle-of-the-road socio-economic scenario combined with 2 °C of warming around 2050 increases exposure by 41% (52 million). A stronger mitigation scenario reaching 2 °C around 2100 limits this increase to 20% (25 million). Rapid climate action therefore avoids interference with peak global population timing and limits climate-change-driven exposure. Cumulatively, over 1.8 billion people could be saved by 2100.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01157-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:11:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1038_s41558-021-01157-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01157-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().