Global warming shrank Indian economy by 31 percent: Study

Global warming has caused Indian ecomy to be 31 percent smaller than it would orwise have been, according to a Stanford study which shows how Earth's temperature changes have increased inequalities.

study, published in journal Proceedings of National Acemy of Sciences, showed that growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere since 1960s have enriched cool countries like rway and Sweden while dragging down ecomic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria.

"Our results show that most of poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than y would have been without global warming," said climate scientist ah Diffenbaugh, from Stanford University in US.

"At same time, majority of rich countries are richer than y would have been," Diffenbaugh said in a statement.

study from 1961 to 2010, global warming decreased wealth per person in world's poorest countries by 17 to 30 percent.

Meanwhile, gap between group of nations with highest and lowest ecomic output per person is w approximately 25 percent larger than it would have been without climate change.

While impacts of temperature may seem small from year to year, y can yield dramatic gains or losses over time.

"This is like a savings account, where small differences in interest rate will generate large differences in account balance over 30 or 50 years," said Diffenbaugh.

After accumulating deces of small effects from warming, India's ecomy is w 31 percent smaller than it would have been in absence of global warming, he said.

Although ecomic inequality between countries has decreased in recent deces, research suggests gap would have narrowed faster without global warming.

study builds on previous research in team analyzed 50 years of annual temperature and GDP measurements for 165 countries to estimate effects of temperature fluctuations on ecomic growth.

y demonstrated that growth during warmer than aver years has accelerated in cool nations and slowed in warm nations.

" historical data clearly show that crops are more productive, people are healthier and we are more productive at work when temperatures are neir too hot r too cold," said Marshall Burke, a Stanford assistant professor of Earth system science.

"This means that in cold countries, a little bit of warming can help. opposite is true in places that are alrey hot," said Burke.

Researchers combined data from more than 20 climate models developed by research centers around world.

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Using climate models to isolate how much each country has alrey warmed due to human-caused climate change, researchers were able to determine what each country's ecomic output might have been h temperatures t warmed.

"For most countries, wher global warming has helped or hurt ecomic growth is pretty certain," said Burke.

Tropical countries, in particular, tend to have temperatures far outside ideal for ecomic growth.

"re's essentially uncertainty that y've been harmed," he said.

It's less clear how warming has influenced growth in countries in middle latitudes, including US, China, and Japan. For se and or temperate-climate nations, analysis reveals ecomic impacts of less than 10 percent.