German study on global costs of climate change retracted by Nature

A landmark 2024 study on the global economic costs of climate change was retracted from the Nature journal on Wednesday after criticism of incorrect data.

The report - titled "The economic commitment of climate change" - was originally published on April 17, 2024, by a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

The researchers said the key findings from the study are unaffected, arguing that the economic damage from climate change by 2050 will be far higher than costs of climate adaptation measures.

More than one year after publication, Nature published a criticism of the study from Stanford University professor Solomon Hsiang and two other US researchers in August 2025.

The critics found that important economic data about Uzbekistan were incorrect and had an excessive impact on the results of the study.

"Inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995-1999," the researchers said in a note explaining the retraction. They acknowledged that the "changes are too substantial for a correction, leading to the retraction."

The PIK team has revised the study and posted it online. According to the new report, which is yet to be peer reviewed, global economic output could be 17% lower by the middle of the century than it would be without further climate change. The original study had predicted the figure at 19%.

Annual global climate damage by the middle of the century is predicted to be five times greater than the cost of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, rather than six times greater as previously calculated.