LAUSR

Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA. ✉e-mail: [email protected] Burke et al.1 find large effects of temperature increases on suicide rates in the United States (US) and Mexico, implying that climate change will result in large increases in suicides in these two countries. Using data made public by Burke et al., I directly test two assumptions of their analysis: that there is no temporal displacement of suicides beyond one month, and that the marginal effect of an unanticipated weather shock is identical to the marginal effect of an anticipated climate shift. I demonstrate that there is strong evidence of temporal displacement beyond one month in the Mexico setting and additional evidence of differential responses to weather and climate shifts in the US setting. In light of these findings, I believe that projecting these statistical relationships onto future climates may overstate the effect of climate change on suicide rates.