New Delhi: A team of Australian researchers on Tuesday said that 4-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures would cut world GDP by around 40 per cent by 2100 – a sharp increase from previous estimates of around 11 per cent.

New projections by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Institute for Climate Risk and Response (ICRR) – published in the journal Environmental Research -- fixes an oversight in the current economic model underpinning global climate policy, toppling previous carbon benchmarks. According to the analysis, the results support limiting global warming to 1.7-degree Celsius, which is in line with significantly faster decarbonisation goals like the Paris Agreement, and far lower than the 2.7-degree Celsius supported under previous models.

“Economists have traditionally looked at historical data comparing weather events to economic growth to cost climate damages,” said lead researcher Dr Timothy Neal, a ‘Scientia Senior Lecturer’ in the School of Economics and also the ICRR.