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

The document details a rolling-window ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model used to analyze the impact of climate extremes on UK lamb prices. It finds that both short-term drought (6-month window) and prolonged wet conditions (12-month window) drive prices up, while a 'pork falsification test' confirms this mechanism is specific to grass-fed lamb. Robustness checks, including CPI deflation and out-of-sample prediction, support the validity of the climate transmission signal. The analysis specifically isolates a 'drought premium' of 92p/kg farmgate for the 2025 drought and notes that the hay market's sensitivity to rainfall anomalies has strengthened over time.

• The core model identifies two distinct rainfall-driven price pressures: drier conditions over a 6-month horizon push prices up (coefficient -0.00644, NW P = 0.006), while prolonged wet conditions over a 12-month horizon also increase prices (coefficient +0.00852, NW P = 0.010).
• A 'pork falsification test' used as a negative control demonstrated that rainfall has no statistically significant predictive power for pork prices, confirming that the observed price increases in lamb are linked to the grass-fed supply chain rather than general economic trends.
• The UK lamb market is largely self-contained, as the addition of the FAO global ovine meat price index to the model resulted in the index being non-significant (P = 0.50) and had negligible impact on rainfall coefficients.
• Analysis of the 2025 drought, using a counterfactual to isolate its effect from the preceding wet winter, found a mean drought premium of 92p/kg farmgate from March to October 2025, which equates to GBP 2.47 per household over that period.
• While there is no evidence that grass growth sensitivity to rainfall is worsening over time (P = 0.63), the hay market shows a significant rainfall x year interaction (P = 0.007), indicating that hay price responses to rainfall anomalies have strengthened.

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} }