Climate Change, Mortality, and Adaptation: Evidence from Annual Fluctuations in Weather in the US

The climate is a key ingredient in the earth’s complex system that sustains human life and well-being. There is a growing consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activity will alter the earth’s climate, most notably by causing temperatures, precipitation levels, and weather variability to increase (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007). The development of rational policies requires estimates of the costs associated with these changes in our planet. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are a popular method to model the costs of climate change. IAMs combine general circulation models of climate and computable general equilibrium economic models to determine the interrelationship between climate and economic activity and policies that affect both of them. An appealing feature of these models is that they allow for a wide range of adaptations