Source: Pew Environmental Group. Image: orvaratli, Flickr.

A new report released by the Pew Environmental Group explains the urgency of U.S. intelligence and Pentagon officials to view climate change as a national security threat.

The study quantifies, for the first time, the economic cost of melting Arctic glaciers at $2.4 trillion by 2050.

“Putting a dollar figure on the Arctic’s climate services allows us to better understand both the region’s immense importance and the enormous price we will pay if the ice is lost,” said Dr. Eban Goodstein, co-author of the report and an economist who directs the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College in New York. “At the mid-range of our estimates, the cumulative cost of the melting Arctic in the next 40 years is equivalent to the annual gross domestic products of Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom combined.”

To arrive at the economic cost of Arctic melting, the report’s authors converted projected trends in snow and ice loss and methane releases into carbon dioxide emissions equivalents. Those were multiplied by the social cost of carbon, an estimate by economists of impacts from climate change on agriculture, energy production, water availability, sea level rise and flooding and other factors. This calculation produced the range of initial dollar estimates cited in the report.

The report “An Initial Estimate of the Cost of Lost Climate Services Due to Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere” notes that this region is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. The loss of heat-reflecting sea ice and snow results in the absorption of more solar energy leading to warming. The thawing of permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Increased warming from these effects, in turn, leads to more melting and thawing in a feedback loop.

The report calculates that this year alone, Arctic melting may warm the Earth an amount equivalent to pumping three billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. “That’s equal to forty percent of all U.S. industrial emissions this year or bringing on line more than 500 large coal-burning power plants,” said Dr. Eugenie Euskirchen, co-author of the report and a scientist from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology.