Aurélien Ribe, Francis W. Zwiers, Jean-Marc Azaïs, Philippe Naveau

Climate Dynamics

Published date April 6, 2016

A new statistical approach to climate change detection and attribution

  • Proposes a new statistical approach to climate change detection and attribution that is based on additive decomposition and simple hypothesis testing
  • Applies the method to the linear trend in global mean temperature over the period 1951–2010
  • Finds that most of the observed warming over this period (+0.65 K) is attributable to anthropogenic forcings (+0.67 ±± 0.12 K, 90 % confidence range), with a very limited contribution from natural forcings (−0.01±0.02−0.01±0.02 K)