IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wes/weswpa/2018-008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adaptation in an Uncertain World - Detection and Attribution of Climate Change Trends and Extreme Possibilities

Author

Listed:
  • Xiyue Li

    (The Brattle Group)

  • Gary Yohe

    (Department of Economics, Wesleyan University)

Abstract

We offer results from an artificial simulation exercise that was designed to answer three fundamental questions that lie at the heart of anticipatory adaptation. First, how can confidence in projected vulnerabilities and impacts be greater than the confidence in attributing what has heretofore been observed? Second, are there characteristics of recent historical data series that do or do not portend our achieving high confidence in attribution to climate change in support of framing adaptation decisions sometime in an uncertain future? And finally, what can analysis of confidence in attribution tell us about ranges of “not-implausible” extreme futures vis a vis projections based at least implicitly on an assumption that the climate system is static? An extension of the IPCC method of assessing our confidence in attribution to anthropogenic sources of detected warming allows us to offer an answer to the first question. We can also identify characteristics that support an affirmative answer to the second. Finally, we offer some insight into the significance of our attribution methodology in informing attempts to frame considerations of potential extremes and how to respond.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiyue Li & Gary Yohe, 2018. "Adaptation in an Uncertain World - Detection and Attribution of Climate Change Trends and Extreme Possibilities," Wesleyan Economics Working Papers 2018-008, Wesleyan University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:wes:weswpa:2018-008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.wesleyan.edu/pdf/gyohe/2018008_yohe.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    adaptation; detection; attribution; uncertain; climate change;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wes:weswpa:2018-008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwesus.html .

    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: Manolis Kaparakis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwesus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.