Adaptation to Climate Change: Evidence from 18th and 19th Century Iceland §

ABSTRACT: 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 e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Matthew A. Turner, Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, Jian Chen, Chunyan Hao
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Climate change
Population change
Climate adaptation
Adverse temperature
§ We thank Dwayne Benjamin
Gillian Hamilton
John Munro
Gunnar Karlsson
and various seminar participants
for helpful comments and discussions. We are also grateful to Benjamin Schachter and Rebecca Lindstr
Gunnar
Iceland
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.307.7775
http://www.probability.ca/jeff/ftpdir/icelandpop.pdf
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Summary:ABSTRACT: 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 adapt to prolonged changes in climate: these adaptations take about 20 years and reduce the short run effect of annual change in temperature by about 60%. Finally, we find that a 1 ◦ C sustained decrease in temperature decreases the steady state population by 10 % to 26%. We argue that our results may provide some information about the effects that future global warming will have on poor populations in warmer countries. Key words: Iceland.

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