On judging the credibility of climate predictions

Otto, Friederike E. L., Ferro, Christopher A. T., Fricker, Thomas E. and Suckling, Emma B. (2015) On judging the credibility of climate predictions. Climatic Change, 132 (1). pp. 47-60. ISSN 0165-0009

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Abstract

Incorporating a prediction into future planning and decision making is advisable only if we have judged the prediction's credibility. This is notoriously difficult and controversial in the case of predictions of future climate. By reviewing epistemic arguments about climate model performance, we discuss how to make and justify judgments about the credibility of climate predictions. We propose a new bounding argument that justifies basing such judgments on the past performance of possibly dissimilar prediction problems. This encourages a more explicit use of data in making quantitative judgments about the credibility of future climate predictions, and in training users of climate predictions to become better judges of credibility. We illustrate the approach using decadal predictions of annual mean, global mean surface air temperature.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geograp...
Additional Information:	© 2013 The Authors © CC BY 4.0
Divisions:	Centre for Analysis of Time Series
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date Deposited:	04 Jul 2013 13:59
Last Modified:	07 Jan 2024 03:12
Projects:	NE/H003509/1.33.
Funders:	Natural Environment Research Council
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/50963

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