How Should Multiple Temperature Time Series be Compared on Graphs?

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Authors

Roy Warren Spencer

Abstract

How temperature biases in both climate models and observations are adjusted in order to make comparisons of climate change signals has been seldom discussed, yet the choice of adjustment method has a large impact on the resulting conclusions. When the primary interest is how global warming evolves through time, how the models’ diagnosed equilibrium climate sensitivities (ECS) correlate with yearly temperatures is a logical test of agreement. Unlike other commonly used methods, it is shown that correlations are maximized when all of the time series are adjusted so their trend lines intersect at year zero. The issue is important to the interpretation of how climate models reveal the global warming signal over time, to how well models agree with observations, and to the policy impact and public debates regarding climate change.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5BB0Z

Subjects

Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Keywords

time series analysis, graphing, Trend Analysis, warming trends

Dates

Published: 2024-09-24 11:35

Last Updated: 2024-09-24 18:35

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International