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Significance Tests in Climate Science

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics 2016-08-24 v1 Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability Applications

Abstract

A large fraction of papers in the climate literature includes erroneous uses of significance tests. A Bayesian analysis is presented to highlight the meaning of significance tests and why typical misuse occurs. It is concluded that a significance test very rarely provides useful quantitative information. The significance statistic is not a quantitative measure of how confident we can be of the 'reality' of a given result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.2934,
  title  = {Significance Tests in Climate Science},
  author = {Maarten H. P. Ambaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.2934},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:58:01.153Z