1POLAR WARMING ATTRIBUTION STILL PREMATURE

• Main Authors: Luigi Mariani, Simone G. Parisi, Gabriele Cola, Paolo Mezzasalma, Morabito Teodoro Georgiadis
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; Pacific; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.641.455; http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Mariani_et_al.Gillett_et_al.pdf

Using Detection and Attribution (D&A) analysis1, Gillett et al. (2008)2 claim that “polar warming ” is due to human activity, by comparing the five-year surface temperature averages in the Arctic and the Antarctic (OBS) to the results of ensembles of Global Climate Models (GCMs). We find their arguments insufficient. Using Detection and Attribution (D&A) analysis1, Gillett et al. (2008)2 claim that “polar warming ” is due to human activity, by comparing the five-year surface temperature averages in the Arctic and the Antarctic (OBS) to the results of ensembles of Global 2Climate Models (GCMs). We find their arguments insufficient, even assuming Gillett’s underlying hypotheses as true: that relatively-sparse OBS data are representative of the Polar regions; and that the means calculated over five-year periods give a realistic picture of climate variability. For the Arctic area, we compare the robustness of Gillett et al.’s results, to what can be obtained from dynamic climatology3. Considering the main Arctic climatic determinants, known good proxies are the North Pacific Index (NPI8) for the Polar