According to Euronews.green, the world's biggest economies have always released the most carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which is why activists and even government officials asked them to offset their emissions one way or another, by helping poorer nations solve their environmental issues, for example.

A recent study coming from the Dartmouth College shows how climate figures can be used at courtrooms or climate summits to negotiate payments for countries that release more emissions.

The team of scientists were able to determine that a small number of rich countries might have caused some trillions of dollars-worth of economic loss worldwide due to warming caused by their activity.

In fact, the top ten countries with the highest emissions are responsible for two-thirds of economic losses worldwide.

The study also reports that the hardest hit nations are those located in the southern hemisphere.

Justin Mankin, the study's senior researcher, said that "greenhouse gases emitted in one country cause warming in another, and that warming can depress economic growth."

The US and China are the first two countries in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and they have caused around 1.79 trillion euros-worth of economic damage worldwide from 1990 to 2014.

"This research provides legally valuable estimates of the financial damages individual nations have suffered due to other countries' climate-changing activities," Mankin added.

Russia, India and Brazil account for nearly 500 billion euros-worth of economic losses each for the same time-frame.

These five countries are responsible for around 6 trillion euros in loses during the studied period, which is about 11% of the global GDP.

Warm temperatures can affect the economy of a country in many ways, some of them being less crops or less overall productivity due to heat stress on the population.

For example, the study suggests that the US costed Mexico around 79 billion euros lost GDP between 1990 and 2014, while Brazil and India were much more heavily affected by the global superpower, 308 billion euros and 255 billion respectively.

Other countries that experience cooler weather have benefited from global warming due to increase in agricultural production, such as Canada, who's GDP went up by 246 billion euros during the studied time-frame.

Christopher Callahan, the study's first author, says that "the statement that it is possible and scientifically credible to link an individual actor to an individual tangible impact is a statement that has not been made robustly in previous work."

"This research provides an answer to the question of whether there is a scientific basis for climate liability claims—the answer is yes. We have quantified each nation’s culpability for historical temperature-driven income changes in every other country", Callahan added.