Climatic natural disasters,political risk,and international trade

This paper statistically analyzes the effects of climatic natural disasters and political risk on bilateral trade in a large-N sample of countries and years. Our theory suggests that the effects of these forces on trade need to be studied together and that the two forces may interact with one another. In the statistical analysis, the unit of analysis is a pair of countries and the model is based on the trade gravity design. The results show that the direct effects of increases in the incidence of disasters and the political risk level in the importer or the exporter countries are negative, reducing trade. The results for the interaction between the two forces show (1) as the incidence of disasters increases, the marginal effect of political risk on trade becomes more negative, which indicates a greater decline in trade and (2) as political risk declines the marginal effect of disasters becomes less negative, indicating a smaller decline in trade. Additional analyses demonstrate the robustness of these results to changes in model specification, disaster measure, and estimation method. In the bigger picture, our findings suggest that if climate change increases the incidence of climatic disasters as projections of the global science suggest, the growth of economic globalization may decline, ceteris paribus.     

Economic development and natural disasters: A satellite data analysis

In this study we examine the impact of large-scale natural disasters on economic development. A major obstacle in exploring this relationship is the poor data quality on GDP per capita in low-income countries, while at the same time more than 90% of all disasters that happen worldwide occur in these particular countries. To overcome this problem, we use data based on satellite images of the night-time light intensity in a specific country or region which is shown to be highly correlated with income per capita. After testing for the sensitivity of the results, our main findings suggest that natural disasters reduce the amount of lights visible from outer space significantly in the short run. To be more precise, we demonstrate that climatic and hydrological disasters cause a large drop in the luminosity in developing and emerging market countries, while geophysical and meteorological disasters decrease light intensity more in industrialized countries. It turns out that using reported real GDP per capita figures underestimates the true impact. Besides, a large part of the economic consequences of the natural events is explained by their regional impact. However, in the long run most of the disaster effect has disappeared. Finally, the impact of a disaster depends partly on the size and scope of the natural catastrophe, the geographical location, the degree of financial development of a country and the quality of the political institutions present.     

Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate-related hazards

Death tolls and economic losses from natural hazards continue to rise in many parts of the world. With the aim to reduce future impacts from natural disasters it is crucial to understand the variability in space and time of the vulnerability of people and economic assets. In this paper we quantified the temporal dynamics of socio-economic vulnerability, expressed as fatalities over exposed population and losses over exposed GDP, to climate-related hazards between 1980 and 2016. Using a global, spatially explicit framework that integrates population and economic dynamics with one of the most complete natural disaster loss databases we quantified mortality and loss rates across income levels and analyzed their relationship with wealth. Results show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability, with global average mortality and economic loss rates that have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016. We further show a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth, which is strongest at the lowest income levels. This has led to a convergence in vulnerability between higher and lower income countries. Yet, there is still a considerable climate hazard vulnerability gap between poorer and richer countries.     

Hydroclimate risk to economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa

In order to plan strategies for adaptation to climate change, the current effects of climate on economic growth need to be understood. This study reviews evidence of climate effects on economic growth and presents original analysis of the effect in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Case studies from the literature demonstrate that historically, climate has had significant and negative effects on household income, agricultural productivity and economic growth in SSA. This study focuses on the effects hydroclimatic variability on economic growth in the countries of SSA. We utilize a new national level precipitation statistic that incorporates spatial and temporal variability within each country. Country level economic growth statistics are analyzed in panel regressions. Persistent negative precipitation anomalies (drought) are found to be the most significant climate influence on GDP per capita growth. Temperature and precipitation variability show significant effects in some cases. Results imply the consideration of hydroclimatic risks, namely drought, may be the priority concern for adaptation to a changing climate for Sub-Saharan Africa. This conclusion is contrary to the premise of many climate change impact assessments that focus on temperature increases as the primary concern.     

Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: A global analysis

Climate change is likely to lead to an increase in the frequency and/or intensity of certain types of natural hazards, if not globally, then at least in certain regions. All other things equal, this should lead to an increase in the economic toll from natural disasters over time. Yet, all other things are not equal since affected areas become wealthier over time and rational individuals and governments undertake defensive mitigation measures, which requires normalizing economic losses if one wishes to analyze trends in economic loss from natural disasters for detecting a potential climate change signal. In this article, we argue that the conventional methodology for normalizing economic loss is problematic since it normalizes for changes in wealth over time, but fails to normalize for differences in wealth across space at any given point of time. We introduce an alternative methodology that overcomes this problem in theory, but faces many more problems in its empirical application. Applying, therefore, both methods to the most comprehensive existing global dataset of natural disaster loss, in general we find no significant upward trends in normalized disaster damage over the period 1980-2009 globally, regionally, for specific disasters or for specific disasters in specific regions. Due to our inability to control for defensive mitigation measures, one cannot infer from our analysis that there have definitely not been more frequent and/or more intensive weather-related natural hazards over the study period already. Moreover, it may still be far too early to detect a trend if human-induced climate change has only just started and will gain momentum over time.     

On the relation between weather-related disaster impacts,vulnerability and climate change

Disasters such as floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts can have enormous implications for health, the environment and economic development. In this article, we address the question of how climate change might have influenced the impact of weather-related disasters. This relation is not straightforward, since disaster burden is not influenced by weather and climate events alone—other drivers are growth in population and wealth, and changes in vulnerability. We normalized disaster impacts, analyzed trends in the data and compared them with trends in extreme weather and climate events and vulnerability, following a 3 by 4 by 3 set-up, with three disaster burden categories, four regions and three extreme weather event categories. The trends in normalized disaster impacts show large differences between regions and weather event categories. Despite these variations, our overall conclusion is that the increasing exposure of people and economic assets is the major cause of increasing trends in disaster impacts. This holds for long-term trends in economic losses as well as the number of people affected. We also found similar, though more qualitative, results for the number of people killed; in all three cases, the role played by climate change cannot be excluded. Furthermore, we found that trends in historic vulnerability tend to be stable over time, despite adaptation measures taken by countries. Based on these findings, we derived disaster impact projections for the coming decades. We argue that projections beyond 2030 are too uncertain, not only due to unknown changes in vulnerability, but also due to increasing non-stationarities in normalization relations.     

Malnutrition and conflict in East Africa: the impacts of resource variability on human security

Changes in climate, along with anthropogenic pressures, impact vegetation productivity and related ecosystem services on which human security relies. The impacts of these climate changes on society will be experienced both through changes in mean conditions over long time periods and through increases in extreme events. Uncertainties remain on how short-term changes in ecosystems influence human security. Most studies analyzing the relationship between human security and climate are at the country level, ignoring fine-grained spatial heterogeneity in local climatic and socio-economic conditions. Here, we used detailed spatio-temporal information extracted from wide-swath satellite data (MODIS) to examine the impact of interannual variability in ecosystems on malnutrition and armed conflict in East Africa while controlling for other natural and socio-economic factors. The analysis was performed at a subnational and village scales. At the regional level, ecosystem variability was associated with malnutrition. This relationship was not statistically significant at the village level. At both levels of analysis, our results indicated that armed conflicts were more likely in regions with more vegetation. Results suggested that, in East Africa, increased levels of malnutrition were related to armed conflicts. They also showed the importance, in low-income countries, of local economic activity and accessibility to reduce the likelihood of malnutrition and insecurity.     

The trap of climate change-induced “natural” disasters and inequality

The purpose of the present paper is to disentangle the mechanisms that connect climate change-induced disasters, inequality and vulnerability by accounting for both directions of causality. We do so by means of a simultaneous equations approach on a panel of 149 countries from 1992 to 2018. The empirical analysis reveals that countries with higher levels of income inequality suffer greater damages when hit by a natural disaster. At the same time, inequality is found to increase the number of people affected by disasters. Our analysis discloses the existence of a vicious cycle that keeps some countries stuck in a disasters-inequality trap.     

Multi-method evidence for when and how climate-related disasters contribute to armed conflict risk

Climate-related disasters are among the most societally disruptive impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Their potential impact on the risk of armed conflict is heavily debated in the context of the security implications of climate change. Yet, evidence for such climate-conflict-disaster links remains limited and contested. One reason for this is that existing studies do not triangulate insights from different methods and pay little attention to relevant context factors and especially causal pathways. By combining statistical approaches with systematic evidence from QCA and qualitative case studies in an innovative multi-method research design, we show that climate-related disasters increase the risk of armed conflict onset. This link is highly context-dependent and we find that countries with large populations, political exclusion of ethnic groups, and a low level of human development are particularly vulnerable. For such countries, almost one third of all conflict onsets over the 1980-2016 period have been preceded by a disaster within 7 days. The robustness of the effect is reduced for longer time spans. Case study evidence points to improved opportunity structures for armed groups rather than aggravated grievances as the main mechanism connecting disasters and conflict onset.     

Climate,development and malaria: an application of <Emphasis Type="Italic">FUND</Emphasis>

Climate change may well increase malaria morbidity and mortality. This would slow economic growth through increased spending on health care, reduced production, and less effective education. Slower economic growth would increase the incidence of malaria morbidity and mortality. The integrated assessment model FUND is used to estimate the strength of this negative feedback. Although climate-change-induced health problems may well substantially affect the projected growth path of developing regions, it is unlikely that climate change would reverse economic growth due to the impacts considered here. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, an area thought to be very sensitive to climate change and associated health effect, the impact, while detectable, is small and unlikely to reverse economic growth.     

中国地震灾害损失评估模型与实证分析研究

中国是世界上地震灾害多发的国家之一,对强震灾害损失进行准确的评价研究具有重要的经济和社会意义.文章着重对震灾的经济损失方面进行评估,将其分为直接经济损失和间接经济损失2个部分.首先运用K-S检验确定我国年地震损失额的分布函数,并对月地震次数进行拟合,然后运用灰色聚类法和主成分分析法对不同震灾分别进行直接和间接经济损失评级,最后对2006-2009年我国地震所造成的经济损失进行评估,对8次震灾进行综合经济损失评级.     

世界排放大国CO2排放和GDP的格兰杰因果分析及其对国际气候治理的影响和意义

基于1990—2015年世界前20个排放大国碳排放量和国内生产总值（GDP）的时间序列数据,采用协整分析、格兰杰因果检验,对主要排放大国碳排放与经济增长之间的关系进行了实证分析。通过协整分析得出大多数国家的碳排放量与经济增长之间存在长期均衡关系;碳排放量和GDP的格兰杰检验结果显示,大多数世界排放大国碳排放与经济增长之间存在单向因果关系。发达国家主要表现为经济增长是碳排放的格兰杰原因,发展中国家则主要表现为碳排放是经济增长的格兰杰原因。研究结果反映了发达国家和发展中国家在碳减排问题上的阶段性特征,碳减排对发展中国家经济发展的负面影响明显大于发达国家。基于格兰杰因果分析结果,国际气候治理进程中关于要求发展中国家现阶段提出大幅减排目标的诉求不符合发展中国家发展阶段特征,可能影响发展中国家经济发展的正常秩序和规律。发达国家基于历史排放责任、发展阶段和能力,都应该带头开展减排行动,并帮助发展中国家实现转型、升级发展,降低经济发展对碳排放的依赖。国际气候治理需要根据并考虑不同国家的发展需求和特征,形成国际合作制度安排,实现社会经济发展与全球气候治理的协同。     

Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007

Many scholars and activists are now advocating a program of economic degrowth for developed countries in order to mitigate demands on the global environment. An increasingly prominent idea is that developed countries could achieve slower or zero economic growth in a socially sustainable way by reducing working hours. Research suggests that reduced working hours could contribute to sustainability by decreasing the scale of economic output and the environmental intensity of consumption patterns. Here, we investigate the effect of working hours on three environmental indicators: ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions. Using data for 1970–2007, our panel analysis of 29 high-income OECD countries indicates that working hours are significantly associated with greater environmental pressures and thus may be an attractive target for policies promoting environmental sustainability.     

Climate change and migration: Is agriculture the main channel?

Migration and climate change are two of the most important challenges the world currently faces. They are connected as climate change may stimulate or hinder migration. One of the sectors strongly affected by climate change is agriculture, which is the source of income for most of the world's poor. Climate change may affect agricultural productivity and hence migration because of its impact on average temperatures and rainfall and because it increases the frequency and intensity of weather shocks. In this paper we use data on 108 countries from 1960 to 2010 to analyze the relationship between weather variations, changes in agricultural productivity and international migration. We find that negative shocks to agricultural productivity caused by climate fluctuations significantly increase emigration from developing countries, an especially strong impact in poor countries but less so in middle income countries. These results are robust to the definitions of the poor country sample, and to several checks and alternative explanations suggested by the literature. Importantly, our results point to a causal interpretation of the agricultural channel to explain the climate change-migration nexus.     

数据驱动下的环境变迁与区域经济成长关联分析

由于经济发展的复杂性,本文旨在探索由环境变迁引发这一动态、复杂而又相互作用的过程,通过引入环境变迁与经济成长两方面因素分析其中的潜在关联性,并将区域稳定性作为环境变迁与经济成长相互作用后的衡量指标,来评估该过程.1）通过使用衡量国家经济健康程度的健康性与复杂性（Fitness and Complexity）算法,获得了新的评估国家经济成长的国家经济健康性系数,该系数能在竞争激烈的动态国际贸易环境下有更好预测GDP的表现.随后建立机器学习模型,成功预测了不同国家的稳定性类别,且预测精度都在90％左右.2）实现了基于数据的环境变迁和区域经济成长的关联性可视化分析,通过分析能够得到潜在关联性结论：一些发展中国家经济稳定性与水资源和二氧化碳排放呈强关联,而发达国家则与人均耕地面积有关联.3）设立评估国家稳定性的新指标,与世界主流指标相比,构建的新指标更注重原始数据的量化,减少了概念抽象的指标对预测性能的影响,且在评估区域经济成长时能更符合当前国际的实际经济情况.本文提出的评估区域稳定性的新排名是完全基于量化指标的,因此更容易实现,说服力更强.通过实际的预测效果分析,该新排名在衡量区域稳定性时弥补了世界主流排名由抽象指标带来的预测失真缺陷,能够满足基本的区域稳定性预测功能,并且能够对预测结果造成影响的主要因素进行解释.     

柴达木盆地枸杞霜冻灾害风险区划

基于气象灾害风险评估方法，利用1961-2017年5-9月柴达木盆地10个代表气象观测站点枸杞种植期发生霜冻灾害频次。结合自然地理和社会经济等数据，建立起致灾因子危险性、孕灾环境敏感性、承灾体脆弱性和防灾减灾能力4个评价指标；采用加权综合评价法，权重赋值进行专家打分来确定，借助GIS空间分析技术，进行了柴达木盆地枸杞霜冻灾害风险评估和区划。结果表明：在柴达木盆地海拔高度在3200米以上，枸杞无法正常生长属于枸杞不可种植区；在冷湖、茫崖大部地区，格尔木南部、大柴旦、德令哈、乌兰以及都兰地区靠近山脉区域，枸杞生长期短，适合耕种的枸杞品种少，对枸杞生产经济效益影响较轻，属于低风险区；在诺木洪、格尔木西部和大柴旦东部地区，这一带多为戈壁，水资源缺乏，适宜种植枸杞面积相对有一定规模。对于霜冻灾害发生的影响程度不太严重，造成的经济损失不太大，属于次高风险区；在都兰经诺木洪至格尔木的小灶火一带，这里是柴达木盆地的枸杞主要种植区，该区域霜冻灾害发生对枸杞影响最大的区域，对枸杞生产产生的经济损失最大，属于高风险区。     

Impact of climate-related disasters on human migration in Mexico: a spatial model

The great human-environmental diversity of Mexico provides a framework for an initial understanding of the wide disparities between rich and poor. Mexico is still dominated in many regions by agriculture, and during the last 25 years, weather-related disasters have accounted for about 80% of economic losses. This is dramatic, especially considering that this sector produces only ca. 4% of GDP while providing a livelihood to one-quarter of the country’s population. Based on a spatial model, this paper tests the contribution of natural disasters to catalyzing the emigration process in vulnerable regions throughout Mexico. Besides coping and adaptive capacity, we assess the effect of economic losses from disasters in combination with adverse production and trade conditions during the 1990s in triggering out-migration.     

基于能量模型的水稻生长模型

该文考虑生命活动与物质交换和能量流动的关系,从热力学出发,引入一维能量模型。在一维能量模型的基础上,将水稻对外界能量的摄取能力与水稻生长季中的气温变化规律联系起来,建立在气温变化条件下水稻的生长模型。结合气温增长率、水稻最适气温和不同阶段的生物量,以徐士良单形调优算法为基础,利用Forcal二维方程参数拟合,得到关于水稻自然增长率、气温波幅和初始值等参数的最优拟合。将最优拟合数据代入水稻的生长模型,拟合得到水稻的生长曲线和水稻生长随气温的变化趋势。以水稻的生长模型为基础,定性分析水稻的临界气温和最大生长率出现时间。通过分析发现,水稻生长季的临界气温与气温增长率无关;水稻的最大生长率出现时间为水稻分蘖后期、孕穗期。为考虑异常气温对水稻生长的影响,利用Matlab对水稻分蘖期低温和生殖生长期高温的水稻生长进行模拟,结果表明:水稻后期高温对产量影响比前期受低温影响严重。     

Integrated Global System Model for Climate Policy Assessment: Feedbacks and Sensitivity Studies

Alternative policies to address global climate change are being debated in many nations and within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To help provide objective and comprehensive analyses in support of this process, we have developed a model of the global climate system consisting of coupled sub-models of economic growth and associated emissions, natural fluxes, atmospheric chemistry, climate, and natural terrestrial ecosystems. The framework of this Integrated Global System Model is described and the results of sample runs and a sensitivity analysis are presented. This multi-component model addresses most of the major anthropogenic and natural processes involved in climate change and also is computationally efficient. As such, it can be used effectively to study parametric and structural uncertainty and to analyze the costs and impacts of many policy alternatives. Initial runs of the model have helped to define and quantify a number of feedbacks among the sub-models, and to elucidate the geographical variations in several variables that are relevant to climate science and policy. The effect of changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on the uptake of carbon and emissions of methane and nitrous oxide by land ecosystems is one potentially important feedback which has been identified. The sensitivity analysis has enabled preliminary assessment of the effects of uncertainty in the economic, atmospheric chemistry, and climate sub-models as they influence critical model results such as predictions of temperature, sea level, rainfall, and ecosystem productivity. We conclude that uncertainty regarding economic growth, technological change, deep oceanic circulation, aerosol radiative forcing, and cloud processes are important influences on these outputs.     

Urbanization Impact on Regional Climate and Extreme Weather: Current Understanding,Uncertainties, and Future Research Directions

Urban environments lie at the confluence of social,cultural,and economic activities and have unique biophysical characteristics due to continued infrastructure development that generally replaces natural landscapes with built-up structures.The vast majority of studies on urban perturbation of local weather and climate have been centered on the urban heat island(UHI)effect,referring to the higher temperature in cities compared to their natural surroundings.Besides the UHI effect and heat waves,urbanization also impacts atmospheric moisture,wind,boundary layer structure,cloud formation,dispersion of air pollutants,precipitation,and storms.In this review article,we first introduce the datasets and methods used in studying urban areas and their impacts through both observation and modeling and then summarize the scientific insights on the impact of urbanization on various aspects of regional climate and extreme weather based on more than 500 studies.We also highlight the major research gaps and challenges in our understanding of the impacts of urbanization and provide our perspective and recommendations for future research priorities and directions.