Meta-emulation: An application to the social cost of carbon

TL;DR

This paper introduces a meta-emulation approach that leverages a large database of model results to more accurately estimate the social cost of carbon, correcting for assumptions that differ from climate impact, discounting, and risk aversion literature.

Contribution

It presents a novel meta-emulator that adjusts the social cost of carbon estimates by accounting for varying underlying assumptions, improving accuracy.

Findings

The social cost of carbon is higher than previously reported.

Meta-emulation corrects for assumptions in existing literature.

Provides a more consistent estimate across different models.

Abstract

A large database of published model results is used to estimate the distribution of the social cost of carbon as a function of the underlying assumptions. The literature on the social cost of carbon deviates in its assumptions from the literatures on the impacts of climate change, discounting, and risk aversion. The proposed meta-emulator corrects this. The social cost of carbon is higher than reported in the literature.