Historical warming has increased US crop insurance losses

Quantification of the sector-specific financial impacts of historical global warming represents a critical gap in climate change impacts assessment. The multiple decades of county-level data available from the U.S. crop insurance program-which collectively represent aggregate damages to the agricultural sector largely borne by U.S. taxpayers-present a unique opportunity to close this gap. Using econometric analysis in combination with observed and simulated changes in county-level temperature, we show that global warming has already contributed substantially to rising crop insurance losses in the U.S. For example, we estimate that county-level temperature trends have contributed $US2017 27.0 billion-or 19%-of the national-level crop insurance losses over the 1991-2017 period. Further, we estimate that observed warming contributed almost half of total losses in the most costly single year (2012). In addition, analyses of a large suite of global climate model simulations yield very high confidence that anthropogenic climate forcing has increased U.S. crop insurance losses. These sector-specific estimates provide important quantitative information about the financial costs of the global warming that has already occurred (including the costs of individual extreme events), as well as the economic value of mitigation and/or adaptation options.

Automated summary

The study using U.S. crop insurance data found that global warming has significantly increased crop insurance losses in the U.S., with econometric analysis showing observed warming as the most significant factor. These findings provide concrete data on the financial costs of global warming that has already occurred.