Climate change attribution and the economic costs of extreme weather events: a study on damages from extreme rainfall and drought

Climatic Change (2020)

We present an initial attempt to quantify recent costs related to extreme weather due to human interference in the climate system, focusing on economic costs arising from droughts and floods in New Zealand from 2007–2017. The estimates we obtain are not comprehensive, and almost certainly represent an underestimate of the full economic costs of climate change. However, the paper shows the potential for developing a new stream of information relevant to a range of stakeholders and research communities, especially those with an interest in the aggregation of the costs of climate change or the identification of specific costs associated with potential liability.