Working Paper SeriesCongressional Budget OfficeWashington,D.C.The Effects of Climate Change onGDP in the 21st CenturyChad ShirleyCongressional Budget OfficeChad.Shirley@cbo.govWilliam SwansonCongressional Budget OfficeWilliam.Swanson@cbo.govWorking Paper 2025-02February 2025To enhance the transparency of the work of the Congressional Budget Office and to encourage externalreview of that work,CBO's working paper series includes papers that provide technical descriptions ofofficial CBO analyses as well as papers that represent independent research by CBO analysts.Papers in thisseries are available at http://go.usa.gov/xUzd7.For valuable comments,the authors thank Elizabeth Kopits of the Environmental Protection Agency,IshanNath of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Govemment,Brian Prest of Resources for the Future,Valerie Ramey of Stanford University,and James Stock of Harvard University.The authors also benefitedgreatly from comments by Christopher Adams,Nicholas Chase,Michael Falkenheim,Evan Herrnstadt,Joseph Kile,Jeffrey Kling,Junghoon Lee,and Hark Yoo.The authors gratefully acknowledge the editorialassistance provided by Christine Browne.www.cbo.gov/publication/61186AbstractThis working paper provides an estimate of a probability distribution of changes in grossdomestic product (GDP)in the year 2100 resulting from changes in temperature.To estimate thatdistribution,we perform a meta-analysis of the literature on the effects of climate change onGDP and combine those effects with forecast global temperature distributions for the year 2100.We fit Gaussian distributions to the underlying data and numerically estimate the jointdistribution of GDP and temperature.Using that distribution,we project that,on average,futuretemperature increases will cause GDP to be 4 percent lower in 2100 than it would have been iftemperatures remained unchanged after 2024.However,considerable uncertainty surrounds thelong-run effects of temperature on output in the United States.There is a 5 percent chance thatGDP in 2100 will be at least 21 percent lower than it would have been in the absence ofadditional changes in temperature.There is a similar chance that GDP will be at least 6 percenthigher by 2100.Keywords:climate change,economic growthJEL Classification:044,Q54