Effect of climate and geography on worldwide fine resolution economic activity

RESEARCH ARTICLE Effect of climate and geography on worldwide fine resolution economic activity Alberto TroccoliID* World Energy and Meteorology Council, The Enterprise Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, United Kingdom * alberto.troccoli@wemcouncil.org Abstract Geography, including climatic factors, have long been considered potentially important ele- ments in shaping socio-economic activities, alongside other determinants, such as institu- tions. Here we demonstrate that geography and climate variables satisfactorily explain the worldwide economic activity as measured by the per capita Gross Cell Product (GCP-PC) at a fine geographical resolution, typically much higher than country average. A 1˚ by 1˚ GCP- PC dataset has been key for establishing and testing a direct relationship between ‘local’ geography/climate and GCP-PC. Not only have we tested the geography and climate hypothesis using many possible explanatory variables, importantly we have also predicted and reconstructed GCP-PC worldwide by retaining the most significant predictors. While this study confirms that latitude is the most important predictor for GCP-PC when taken in isolation, the accuracy of the GCP-PC prediction is greatly improved when other factors mainly related to variations in climatic variables, rather than average climatic conditions as typically used, are considered. However, latitude diminishes in importance when only the wealthier parts of the globe are considered. This work points to specific features of the cli-

mate system which explain economic activity, such as the variability in air pressure. Implica- tions of these findings range from an improved understanding of why socio-economically better-off societies are geographically placed where they are in the present, past and future to informing where new economic activities could be established in order to yield favourable economic outcomes based on geography and climate conditions. Introduction The relevance of meteorology (comprising weather and climate) and geography variables on the socio-economic activities is a fascinating subject and one that has been touched on inter- mittently for centuries. Notable mentions are Montesquieu’s treatise ‘The Spirit of Laws’ of 1750 in which, as reported by [1], he argued that an ‘excess of heat’ made men ‘slothful and dis- pirited’. More than a century and a half later, [2] analysed in more detail how key weather vari- ables such as temperature and humidity influence labour productivity. He found that not only did temperature have an effect on labour productivity, also other meteorological factors such as relative humidity, wind speed, and storms (or pressure changes) were important too. He PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229243 March 2, 2020 1 / 20 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Troccoli A (2020) Effect of climate and geography on worldwide fine resolution economic activity. PLoS ONE 15(3): e0229243. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229243 Editor: Shihe Fu, Xiamen University, CHINA

Received: September 18, 2018 Accepted: December 18, 2019 Published: March 2, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Alberto Troccoli. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.