The scientific journal Nature has retracted a 2024 climate study after researchers and outside economists identified significant data flaws that affected the report’s findings on long-term economic damage from climate change.
The decision was announced Wednesday and follows months of discussion among experts who questioned the study’s projections.
The original study, published in April 2024, concluded that climate change would cause substantially more economic harm by the end of the century than earlier estimates suggested.
The house of cards that is climate science is coming crashing down. @Nature is not a serious journal anymore. https://t.co/7zm22iGh6x pic.twitter.com/0HSjGX0dPz
— Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki (@MatthewWielicki) December 3, 2025
Its findings were widely cited, covered extensively in global media, and incorporated into risk-management modeling used by central banks.
The study projected a potential 62 percent decline in global economic output by the year 2100 if carbon emissions continued without major reductions.
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Economists reviewing the study later found irregularities in the dataset for Uzbekistan.
That data point, they said, substantially altered the overall results.
When Uzbekistan was removed from the dataset, the economists determined that the long-term economic damage estimates aligned much more closely with previous research.
Under those revised conditions, global output would decline by an estimated 23 percent by 2100, not the 62 percent predicted in the original publication.
On Wednesday, Nature issued a statement acknowledging the error and formally retracting the study.
“The authors acknowledge that these changes are too substantial for a correction, leading to the retraction of the paper,” the journal stated.
The authors are currently revising their work using corrected data and intend to submit an updated manuscript for peer review.
The retraction has renewed discussion among researchers over the reliability of long-range climate-economic modeling.
Lint Barrage, chair of energy and climate economics at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), noted that the study’s flaws raise broader concerns about expectations within the climate research community.
“It can feel sometimes, depending on the audience, that there’s an expectation of finding large [climate damage] estimates,” she said.
“If your goal is to try to make the case for climate change, you have crossed the line from scientist to activist, and why would the public trust you?”
The debate over climate-damage projections has also gained attention in policy circles.
Prior to the COP30 climate summit, Bill Gates remarked in October that public communication around climate risks should move away from “doomsday” framing, saying the facts do not always align with the most extreme predictions.
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“We won’t achieve our best goal, the 1.5 or even the 2 degrees … We have to frame it in terms of overall human welfare ….. If we stopped funding all vaccines and that saved you 0.1… pic.twitter.com/ndOaafW5jY
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) October 28, 2025
The authors of the retracted paper said they intend to resubmit a revised analysis once the corrected data is incorporated and reviewed.
