Concordia researcher Damon Matthews is looking at climate change through an economic lense.

Some argue taking action to prevent the effects of climate change is expensive, and would have adverse economic effects, the climatologist said.

But his recent work has focussed on the extreme impact heat has on labour. Hot weather results in reduced labour efficiency, particularly for those working outside.

"It can be a pretty significant toll. We all experience hot days here in the summer in Montreal and obviously around the world," he said. "What we wanted to do in our research was to contextualize this in a climate change narrative and to show to what extent the CO2 emissions that we actually produce lead to these potential losses in labour productivity."

He and his team found a significant decline in global labour productivity leading to GDP losses.

The effects of climate change--like frequent heatwaves--affect labourers who work outside.

Developing countries are more at risk of such effects, the researcher said. In many such countries, hot weather is already common. Increased temperatures are more likely to make such weather unbearable.

"It's one more argument in favour of decreasing the emissions we produce as quickly as possible," he said.