Statistical significance of climate sensitivity predictors obtained by data mining

This study automates the search for observable predictors using data from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The primary focus of this paper is assessing statistical significance of the resulting predictive relationships.

Failure to account for dependence between models, variables, locations, and seasons is shown to yield misleading results. A new technique for testing the field significance of data-mined correlations which avoids these problems is presented. Using this new approach, all 41,741 relationships we tested were found to be explainable by chance.