Carbon released into the atmosphere by the increasing loss of Arctic permafrost, combined with higher solar absorption by the Earth’s surface due to the melting of sea ice and land snow, will accelerate climate change – and have a multi-trillion-dollar impact on the world economy.

A new paper in Nature Communications reveals a combination of these factors has the potential to increase the long-term economic impact of climate change by just under $70 trillion, under mitigation levels consistent with current national pledges to cut carbon emissions (5% of the estimated total cost of climate change for this scenario).

Under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Paris Agreement target of global temperature rises being limited to 1.5C from pre-industrial levels, the extra impact drops to $25 trillion (4% of the total cost for this scenario). In both cases, the primary driver behind the additional costs is the emitted permafrost carbon.

Read more at Lancaster University

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