PowerPoint Presentation - Presentation at Yale University

lStrategy: Search for a computer model-predicted pattern of climate change (the “fingerprint”) in observed climate records

lAssumption: Each factor that influences climate has a different characteristic signature in climate records

lMethod: Standard signal processing techniques

lAdvantage: Fingerprinting allows researchers to make rigorous tests of competing hypotheses regarding the causes of recent climate change

What is “climate fingerprinting”?


	Detecting “significant” climate change means showing that a given change in climate is unusual relative to some yardstick that you have of “normal” behavior.
	If you feel hot, and measure a body temperature of 102^oF, then you’ve “detected” a fever - you know that that this elevated temperature is outside the limits of “normal” body temperature.
	But this measurement doesn’t give you the cause of the fever.
	To deduce the cause, you’ll probably need to undergo some more sophisticated tests - perhaps urine and blood analyses, maybe even x-rays or CAT scans.
	Once you have the results from these tests, it’s much easier to narrow down the potential causes of the fever.
	This is attribution - the process of establishing cause and effect.