Brattle Academic Advisor Co-Authors Paper On The Monetary Value Of Snow

Dr. Michael Goldstein, a professor of finance at Babson College and an Academic Advisor to The Brattle Group, co-authored a paper for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) assessing the monetary value of seasonal snow. Dr. Goldstein and his collaborators, Matthew Sturm of The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and Charles Parr of the Geophysical Institute, note that the ongoing changes in seasonal snowfall could lead to losses ranging from $1 trillion to $4.4 trillion in twenty years.

The paper highlights several specific industries and geographies that could be financially impacted by the decreasing levels of snowfall. In the American Southwest, for example, reduced snowmelt flowing into the Colorado River may result in $1 billion to $1 trillion in losses to agriculture and industry. The wide gap in these estimated costs is partially connected to the rate of change to snowfall and the value of water; small differences in both can lead to significant rises in...