Econometric Measurement of Earth's Transient Climate Sensitivity

Thomas Leirvik, Peter Phillips and Trude Storelvmo
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Thomas Leirvik: Nord University
Trude Storelvmo: Yale University

No 2083, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: How sensitive is Earth�s climate to a given increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations" This long-standing and fundamental question in climate science was recently analyzed by dynamic panel data methods using extensive spatiotemporal data of global surface temperatures, solar radiation, and GHG concentrations over the last half century to 2010 (Storelvmo et al, 2016). These methods revealed that atmospheric aerosol effects masked approximately one-third of the continental warming due to increasing GHG concentrations over this period, thereby implying greater climate sensitivity to GHGs than previously thought. The present study provides asymptotic theory justifying the use of these methods when there are stochastic process trends in both the global forcing variables, such as GHGs, and station-level trend effects from such sources as local aerosol pollutants. These asymptotics validate con dence interval construction for econometric measures of Earth�s transient climate sensitivity. The methods are applied to observational data and to data generated from three leading global climate models (GCMs) that are sampled spatio-temporally in the same way as the empirical observations. The fi ndings indicate that estimates of transient climate sensitivity produced by these GCMs lie within empirically determined con dence limits but that the GCMs uniformly underestimate the effects of aerosol induced dimming. The analysis shows the potential of econometric methods to calibrate GCM performance against observational data and to reveal the respective sensitivity parameters (GHG and non-GHG related) governing GCM temperature trends.

Keywords: Climate sensitivity; Cointegration; Common stochastic trend; Idiosyncratic trend; Spatio-temporal model; Unit root (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 C33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Econometric Measurement of Earth's Transient Climate Sensitivity (2017)
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