Checking the price tag on catastrophe: The social cost of carbon under non-linear climate response

Arbeitspapier

Research into the social cost of carbon emissions - the marginal social damage from a tonne of emitted carbon - has tended to focus on best guess scenarios. Such scenarios generally ignore the potential for low-probability, high-damage events, which are critically important to determining optimal climate policy. This paper uses the FUND integrated assessment model to investigate the influence of three types of low-probability, high-impact climate responses on the social cost of carbon: the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation; large scale dissociation of oceanic methane hydrates; and climate sensitivities above best guess levels. We find that incorporating these events can increase the social cost of carbon by a factor of over 3.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ESRI Working Paper ; No. 392

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: climate change ; catastrophe ; non-linearity ; impacts

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ceronsky, Megan ; Anthoff, David ; Hepburn, Cameron ; Tol, Richard S. J.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)
• (where): Dublin
• (when): 2011

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/50174
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET