Climate Change is depressing, but it could be even worse, and the economic effects are being underestimating by trillions of dollars, according to a new study co-authored by scientists from the University of Warwick.

The study, led by Georgetown University and published in Nature Communications, shows that current economic forecasting models fail to account for unpredictable variations in global temperatures, rather than the more predictable rising temperatures themselves.

Co-author Professor Sandra Chapman, of the University of Warwick Department of Physics, said: “When we cause a system like the Earth's climate to warm, it does not warm smoothly and uniformly. Changes in the Earth's temperature translate into economic damages and our work estimates the additional economic damage that we can expect due to these fluctuations in earth's global mean temperature on top of the smooth gradual increase due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.”

The extra damages – anywhere from $10tr to $50tr over the next 200 years when measured in today’s dollars, according to the study – show us that the cost of inaction is substantially higher than previously believed.

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