Explosive Temperatures

This paper finds that global temperature anomalies are characterised by (temporary) explosiveness, a statistical feature typically found in financial and commodity market data during episodes of extreme price increases. This finding dramatically illustrates the extent temperature changes have already reached. This paper also finds that there are differences across hemispheres: while Northern hemispheric temperature anomalies are clearly found to be explosive, evidence is much weaker in Southern hemispheric data. This finding is attributable to the phenomenon of Arctic amplification. This paper complements recent studies in both climate econometrics and science which find that climate models seem to underestimate this phenomenon.