Adaptation to Climate Change: Context Matters

Adaptation to Climate Change

We investigate the effect of climate change on population growth in 18th and 19th century Iceland. We find that annual temperature changes help determine the population growth rate in preindustrial Iceland: a year 1◦C cooler than average drives down population growth rates by 0.57% in each of the next two years, for a total effect of 1.14%. We also find that 18th and 19th century Icelanders ada...

Climate Change and Adaptation

Financing climate change adaptation.

This paper examines the topic of financing adaptation in future climate change policies. A major question is whether adaptation in developing countries should be financed under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or whether funding should come from other sources. We present an overview of financial resources and propose the employment of a two-track approach...

Adaptation and Climate Change

This paper deals with the often ignored issue of adaptation to human-induced climate change. Adaptation is not only inevitable but essential to fashioning the least-social-cost strategy to addressing climate change. The urgency for limiting climate change is inversely proportional to society's adaptability. Some limitation strategies are incompatible with adaptation goals (e.g., reducing CO2 ra...

Adaptation to Climate Change in Preindustrial Iceland

We investigate the effect of climate change on population growth in 18th and 19th century Iceland. We find that a year 1◦C cooler than average drives down population growth rates by 0.57% in each of the next two years, for a total effect of 1.14%. We also find that 18th and 19th century Icelanders adapt to prolonged changes in climate: these adaptations take about 20 years and reduce the short ...