Technical appendix for Climate extremes in the UK are driving up lamb prices for consumers

This technical appendix details the econometric modeling and robustness checks used to estimate the impact of climate extremes on farmgate lamb prices in Great Britain from January 2019 to February 2026. The analysis employs a rolling-window ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to demonstrate that both short-term drought and long-term wet conditions drive price increases through a grass-fed supply chain mechanism.

• The core model identifies two distinct rainfall channels affecting lamb prices: a 6-month window where drier conditions increase prices (coefficient -0.00644, NW P = 0.006) and a 12-month window where prolonged wet conditions also increase prices (coefficient +0.00852, NW P = 0.010).
• A 'pork falsification test' used as a negative control confirmed that rainfall has no statistically significant predictive power for pork prices, supporting the conclusion that the lamb price signal operates specifically through a grass/hay pathway rather than general economic trends.
• The UK lamb market is found to be largely self-contained, as the addition of the FAO global ovine meat price index to the model was non-significant (P = 0.50) and did not materially alter the rainfall coefficients.
• Analysis of grass growth data independently corroborates the biological supply channel, showing that a 1% increase in grass growth reduces farmgate lamb prices by 0.24% (NW P = 0.011).
• The model's climate transmission structure is robust to various tests: it remains significant after CPI deflation to remove inflationary noise, after adding a dummy for the Ukraine invasion (which was non-significant at P = 0.386), and across different rolling window specifications.
• Out-of-sample prediction using data from 2019–2023 to predict 2024–2025 prices showed a direction accuracy of 73%, although the model systematically underpredicted 2024 prices due to the severity of the 2023–2024 wet winter.
• A counterfactual decomposition of the 2025 drought (March–October) isolated a mean drought premium of 92p/kg farmgate, which translates to a cost of GBP 2.47 per household over that 8-month period.
• While there is no evidence of worsening sensitivity in grass growth over time, the hay market shows a significant rainfall × year interaction (P = 0.007), indicating that the hay price response to rainfall anomalies has strengthened over time.

APA

Bentley-McKune, J. (2026). Technical appendix for Climate extremes in the UK are driving up lamb prices for consumers. Zero Carbon Analytics. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Technical-Appendix-Climate-extremes-in-the-UK-are-driving-up-lamb-prices-for-consumers-2026-03.pdf

Chicago

Bentley-McKune, Joanne. Technical appendix for Climate extremes in the UK are driving up lamb prices for consumers. Zero Carbon Analytics, 2026. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Technical-Appendix-Climate-extremes-in-the-UK-are-driving-up-lamb-prices-for-consumers-2026-03.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bentley-McKune |first1=Joanne |title=Technical appendix for Climate extremes in the UK are driving up lamb prices for consumers |publisher=Zero Carbon Analytics |date=March 2026 |url=https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Technical-Appendix-Climate-extremes-in-the-UK-are-driving-up-lamb-prices-for-consumers-2026-03.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bentleymckune2026technical, author = {Bentley-McKune, Joanne}, title = {{Technical appendix for Climate extremes in the UK are driving up lamb prices for consumers}}, institution = {Zero Carbon Analytics}, year = {2026}, month = mar, url = {https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Technical-Appendix-Climate-extremes-in-the-UK-are-driving-up-lamb-prices-for-consumers-2026-03.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }