BRUSSELS — Climate change is already costing Europe dearly.
This summer’s droughts, heat waves and floods have cost the European Union an estimated €43 billion this year, knocking nearly half a percentage point off the region’s economic output, according to a study published Monday.
The same study estimated that the ripple effects from this summer’s events will cause a cumulative damage to the European economy of about €126 billion by 2029.
“These estimates are likely conservative,” said the authors of the study, Sehrish Usman of the University of Mannheim, and Miles Parker and Mathilde Vallat, economists at the European Central Bank.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent as greenhouse gases warm the world.
In 2024, natural disasters, including catastrophic flooding in Spain, destroyed assets worth $31 billion in Europe, according to the insurance company MunichRe.
“Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and all of this is contributing to the rising economic cost for the European regions,” Usman said at an event in Brussels on Monday.
The study included physical damage to buildings and infrastructure as well as impact on worker productivity and efficiency, and spillover effects on other parts of the economy. It did not include damage from wildfires that burned more than 1 million hectares in Europe this year.
“These events are not just temporary shocks,” said Usman. “They manifest their impacts over time.” Floods can disrupt supply chains. Droughts can cripple agricultural yields.
“Initially, this is just a heat wave,” she said. “But it affects your efficiency, it reduces your labor productivity.”
Droughts were the most damaging, causing an estimated €29.4 billion of loss to the EU this summer. Heat waves and floods caused damages of €6.8 billion and €6.5 billion, respectively.
Southern Europe, a region particularly vulnerable to climate change, was hit hardest. Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Bulgaria suffered losses of more than 1 percent of their economic output.
“Denmark, Sweden, Germany show relatively lower damages but the frequency and magnitude of these events, especially floods, are also increasing across these regions,” the researchers wrote.
The findings come just after climate scientists reported that global warming made a heat wave in July in Norway, Sweden and Finland 2 degrees Celsius hotter than it would have otherwise been. Scientists have also calculated that wildfires in Spain and Portugal were made 40 times more likely by climate change.
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