[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sus/susewp/08516.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Shutting Down the Thermohaline Circulation

Author

Listed:
  • Richard S.J. Tol

    (UK Department of Economics, University of Sussex,UK Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • David Anthoff

    (University of California, Berkeley, Energy and Resources Group, 310 Barrows Hall # 3050, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA)

  • Francisco Estrada

    (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior S/N, Mexico DF, 04510; Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Abstract
Past climatic changes were caused by a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation. We use results from experiments with three climate models to show that the expected cooling due to a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation is less in magnitude than the expected warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The integrated assessment model FUND and a meta-analysis of climate impacts are used to evaluate the change in human welfare. We find modest but by and large positive effects on human welfare since a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation implies decelerated warming.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard S.J. Tol & David Anthoff & Francisco Estrada, 2016. "Shutting Down the Thermohaline Circulation," Working Paper Series 08516, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:08516
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/documents/wps--85-2016.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. P. Michael Link & Richard S. J. Tol, 2004. "Possible economic impacts of a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation: an application of FUND," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 3(2), pages 99-114, September.
    2. Fankhauser, Samuel & S.J. Tol, Richard, 2005. "On climate change and economic growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-17, January.
    3. D. C. Barber & A. Dyke & C. Hillaire-Marcel & A. E. Jennings & J. T. Andrews & M. W. Kerwin & G. Bilodeau & R. McNeely & J. Southon & M. D. Morehead & J.-M. Gagnon, 1999. "Forcing of the cold event of 8,200 years ago by catastrophic drainage of Laurentide lakes," Nature, Nature, vol. 400(6742), pages 344-348, July.
    4. Francisco Estrada & Richard S. J. Tol, 2015. "Toward Impact Functions For Stochastic Climate Change," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(04), pages 1-13, November.
    5. P. Link & Richard Tol, 2011. "Estimation of the economic impact of temperature changes induced by a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation: an application of FUND," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 287-304, January.
    6. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    7. Nigel W. Arnell & Emma L. Tompkins & W. Neil Adger, 2005. "Eliciting Information from Experts on the Likelihood of Rapid Climate Change," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(6), pages 1419-1431, December.
    8. Richard S. J. Tol, 2009. "The Economic Effects of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 29-51, Spring.
    9. P. Michael Link & Richard S.J. Tol, 2006. "The economic impact of a shutdown of the Thermohaline Circulation: an application of FUND," Working Papers FNU-103, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised May 2006.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Anthoff & Richard S. J. Tol, 2022. "Testing the Dismal Theorem," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(5), pages 885-920.
    2. Richard S.J. Tol, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Weather and Climate," Video Library 2094, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. Riccardo Rebonato & Riccardo Ronzani & Lionel Melin, 2023. "Robust management of climate risk damages," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(3), pages 1-43, September.
    4. Rising, James A. & Taylor, Charlotte & Ives, Matthew C. & Ward, Robert E.t., 2022. "Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114941, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Stephen Keen & Timothy M. Lenton & Antoine Godin & Devrim Yilmaz & Matheus Grasselli & Timothy J. Garrett, 2021. "Economists' erroneous estimates of damages from climate change," Papers 2108.07847, arXiv.org.
    6. Rising, James A. & Taylor, Charlotte & Ives, Matthew C. & Ward, Robert E.T., 2022. "Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Anthoff & Francisco Estrada & Richard S. J. Tol, 2016. "Shutting Down the Thermohaline Circulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 602-06, May.
    2. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    3. Franziska Piontek & Matthias Kalkuhl & Elmar Kriegler & Anselm Schultes & Marian Leimbach & Ottmar Edenhofer & Nico Bauer, 2019. "Economic Growth Effects of Alternative Climate Change Impact Channels in Economic Modeling," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(4), pages 1357-1385, August.
    4. Tol, Richard S.J., 2024. "A meta-analysis of the total economic impact of climate change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    5. Megan Ceronsky & David Anthoff & Cameron Hepburn & Richard S.J. Tol, 2005. "Checking The Price Tag On Catastrophe: The Social Cost Of Carbon Under Non-Linear Climate Response," Working Papers FNU-87, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Aug 2005.
    6. Timothy Lenton & Juan-Carlos Ciscar, 2013. "Integrating tipping points into climate impact assessments," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 585-597, April.
    7. Tol, Richard S.J., 2019. "A social cost of carbon for (almost) every country," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 555-566.
    8. Anthoff, David & Tol, Richard S.J., 2010. "On international equity weights and national decision making on climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 14-20, July.
    9. P. Link & Richard Tol, 2011. "Estimation of the economic impact of temperature changes induced by a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation: an application of FUND," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 287-304, January.
    10. Chang, Jun-Jie & Mi, Zhifu & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2023. "Temperature and GDP: A review of climate econometrics analysis," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 383-392.
    11. Arbex, Marcelo & Batu, Michael, 2020. "What if people value nature? Climate change and welfare costs," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    12. Acevedo, Sebastian & Mrkaic, Mico & Novta, Natalija & Pugacheva, Evgenia & Topalova, Petia, 2020. "The Effects of Weather Shocks on Economic Activity: What are the Channels of Impact?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Marcelo Arbex & Michael Batu, 2017. "Weather, Climate and the Economy: Welfare Implications of Temperature Shocks," Working Papers 1707, University of Windsor, Department of Economics.
    14. Francisco Estrada & Richard S J Tol & Wouter J W Botzen, 2017. "Global economic impacts of climate variability and change during the 20th century," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-16, February.
    15. Joaquín Bernal-Ramírez & Jair Ojeda-Joya & Camila Agudelo-Rivera & Felipe Clavijo-Ramírez & Carolina Durana-Ángel & Clark Granger-Castaño & Daniel Osorio-Rodríguez & Daniel Parra-Amado & José Pulido &, 2022. "Impacto macroeconómico del cambio climático en Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, issue 102, pages 1-62, July.
    16. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2022. "Energy poverty, temperature and climate change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    17. Oliver Schenker, 2013. "Exchanging Goods and Damages: The Role of Trade on the Distribution of Climate Change Costs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 261-282, February.
    18. Martin Henseler & Ingmar Schumacher, 2019. "The impact of weather on economic growth and its production factors," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 417-433, June.
    19. Mehmet Balcilar & Elie Bouri & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2021. "El Niño, La Niña, and the Forecastability of the Realized Variance of Heating Oil Price Movements," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-23, July.
    20. Checo, Ariadne & Mejía, Mariam & Ramírez, Francisco A., 2017. "El rol de los regímenes de precipitaciones sobre la dinámica de precios y actividad del sector agropecuario de la República Dominicana durante el período 2000-2016 [The role of rainfall regimes on ," MPRA Paper 80301, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate change; thermohaline circulation; integrated assessment; climate impacts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:sus:susewp:08516. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: University of Sussex Business School Communications Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsusuk.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.