‘Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system‘
Our work in this area seeks to improve on economic estimates of the impacts of tipping points in the climate system. To date, climate economics still features a number of blind spots concerning missing risks. Several missing risks relate to disruptions of large-scale climatic systems such as the disintegration of the large ice sheets, melting of permafrost soil, or changes in ocean circulation patterns. A burgeoning economic literature on such climatic tipping points has produced a wide array of estimates that have so far not been synthesized. In our work, we develop a new integrated assessment model that allows us to synthesize the literature (META – Model for Economic Tipping point Analysis). In doing so, we improve on the quantification of the effect of uncertainty on the economic impacts of climate change. META is modular in nature and reproduces tipping points from the literature precisely. META is also open source and we welcome collaborators to work on new tipping point modules or to update existing ones.
Publications
Economic impacts of melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Simon Dietz and Felix Koninx.
Nature Communications, 13, 5819, October 2022.
Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system
Simon Dietz, James Rising, Thomas Stoerk, Gernot Wagner
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Aug 2021, 118, (34), e2103081118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103081118
Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon
Gernot Wagner, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, Simon Dietz, Kenneth T. Gillingham, Ben Groom, J. Paul Kelleher, Frances C. Moore & James H. Stock.
Nature | 590 | 25 February 2021.
The missing economic risks in assessments of climate change impacts
Ruth DeFries, Ottmar Edenhofer, Alex Halliday, Geoffrey Heal, Timothy Lenton, Michael Puma, James Rising, Johan Rockström, Alex C. Ruane, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, David Stainforth, Nicholas Stern, Marco Tedesco, Bob Ward
Policy Insight, September 2019
Recommendations for improving the treatment of risk and uncertainty in economic estimates of climate impacts in the Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report
Thomas Stoerk, Gernot Wagner, Robert E T Ward.
Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 12, 1 August 2018, Pages 371–376, https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/rey005
News
Breaching tipping points would increase economic costs of climate change impacts (Press release, 16 August 2021)
Letter to Professor Pörtner and Professor Roberts (Co-Chairs of IPCC Working Group II)
June 2018
META 2021 (The Model for Economic Tipping point Analysis)
The current implementation of META is licensed as GNU General Public License v3.0. The model is available on Github
Selected presentations
EAERE2022 (Simon Dietz, June 2022)
SURED2022 (Simon Dietz, June 2022)
AERE2022 (Simon Dietz, June 2022)
Environmental Defense Fund (Thomas Stoerk, January 2022)
International Monetary Fund, Research Seminar (Thomas Stoerk, December 2021)
European Central Bank (Thomas Stoerk, December 2021)
OECD Expert workshop on Economic Modelling of Climate and Related Tipping Points (Simon Dietz, October 2021)
Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics (Thomas Stoerk, September 2021)
NBER Summer Institute 2021 Environmental & Energy Economics (Simon Dietz, July 2021)
EAERE 2020 (Thomas Stoerk, June 2021)
AERE 2020 (Thomas Stoerk, June 2020)
EGU 2020 (James Rising, May 2020)
ASSA 2020 Annual Meeting (Simon Dietz, January 2020)
Forthcoming presentations
ASSA 2023 Annual Meeting (Thomas Stoerk, January 2023)
OECD Working Party on Climate, Investment and Development (Simon Dietz, December 2022)
LSE (Thomas Stoerk and Simon Dietz, December 2022)