Extreme heat spreads economic costs. We must work harder at tackling it

Heatwaves cost more to trading partners through lost imports than they do to the countries that experience them, researchers in Germany have demonstrated, writes James Moore

Drying up: a reservoir in Wales that fell victim to the extreme heat in Britain this summer (Getty)

To suggest that heat of the kind Britain and numerous other countries experienced this summer damages productivity is clearly a statement of the obvious.

But there’s more than that to a recent study by ZEW Mannheim and the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. It has a fascinating sting in its tail.

In the study, Daniel Osberghaus and Oliver Schenker examine the impact on international trade of such temperature shocks – the sort of extreme weather events that are likely to become a lot more common as the climate crisis deepens.