English

The climate niche of Homo Sapiens

Physics and Society 2023-06-02 v1 General Economics Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability Economics

Abstract

I propose the Dominicy-Hill-Worton estimator to estimate the current climate niche of Homo Sapiens and our croplands. I use this to extrapolate the degree of unprecedentedness of future climates. Worton's peeled hull is a non-parametric, N-dimensional generalization of order statistics. Dominicy and colleagues show that Hill's estimator of the tail-index can be applied to any homogeneous function of multivariate order statistics. I apply the Dominicy-Hill estimator to transects through Worton's peels. I find a thick tail for low temperatures and a thin tail for high ones. That is, warming is more worrying than cooling. Similarly, wettening is more worrying than drying. Furthermore, temperature changes are more important than changes in precipitation. The results are not affected by income, population density, or time. I replace the Hill estimator by the QQ one and correct it for top-censoring. The qualitative results are unaffected.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.00002,
  title  = {The climate niche of Homo Sapiens},
  author = {Richard S. J. Tol},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.00002},
  year   = {2023}
}