IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hrv/faseco/33201420.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does temperature contain a stochastic trend? Evaluating conflicting statistical results

Author

Listed:
  • Kaufmann, Robert K.
  • Kauppi, Heikki
  • Stock, James H.

Abstract

We evaluate the claim by Gay et al. (Clim Change 94:333–349, 2009) that “surface temperature can be better described as a trend stationary process with a one-time permanent shock†than efforts by Kaufmann et al. (Clim Change 77:249–278, 2006) to model surface temperature as a time series that contains a stochastic trend that is imparted by the time series for radiative forcing. We test this claim by comparing the in-sample forecast generated by the trend stationary model with a one-time permanent shock to the in-sample forecast generated by a cointegration/error correction model that is assumed to be stable over the 1870– 2000 sample period. Results indicate that the in-sample forecast generated by the cointegration/error correction model is more accurate than the in-sample forecast generated by the trend stationary model with a one-time permanent shock. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations of the cointegration/error correction model generate time series for temperature that are consistent with the trend-stationary-with-a-break result generated by Gay et al. (Clim Change 94:333–349, 2009), while the time series for radiative forcing cannot be modeled as trend stationary with a one-time shock. Based on these results, we argue that modeling surface temperature as a time series that shares a stochastic trend with radiative forcing offers the possibility of greater insights regarding the potential causes of climate change and efforts to slow its progression.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaufmann, Robert K. & Kauppi, Heikki & Stock, James H., 2009. "Does temperature contain a stochastic trend? Evaluating conflicting statistical results," Scholarly Articles 33201420, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:33201420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33201420/TemperatureStochasticTrend.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33201420/TemperatureStochasticTrend.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:33201420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Office for Scholarly Communication (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.