![]() Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00010686 | |||||||||
Climate Change | |||||||||
Burgess COMMENTARY | |||||||||
view full access options NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | LETTER Print Share/bookmark Economic impacts of carbon dioxide and methane released from thawing permafrost Chris Hope & Kevin Schaefer AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author Nature Climate Change (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2807 Received 20 February 2015 Accepted 21 August 2015 Published online 21 September 2015 Article tools Citation Reprints Rights & permissions Article metrics The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the global average1. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at current rates, this warming will lead to the widespread thawing of permafrost and the release of hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 and billions of tonnes of CH4 into the atmosphere2. So far there have been no estimates of the possible extra economic impacts from permafrost emissions of CO2 and CH4. Here we use the default PAGE09 integrated assessment model3 to show the range of possible global economic impacts if this CO2 and CH4 is released into the atmosphere on top of the anthropogenic emissions from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario A1B (ref. 4) and three other scenarios. Under the A1B scenario, CO2 and CH4 released from permafrost increases the mean net present value of the impacts of climate change by US$43 trillion, or about 13% (5–95% range: US$3–166 trillion), proportional to the increase in total emissions due to thawing permafrost. The extra impacts of the permafrost CO2 and CH4 are sufficiently high to justify urgent action to minimize the scale of the release. |