Significance tests in climate science

Ambaum, M. H. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6824-8083 (2010) Significance tests in climate science. Journal of Climate, 23 (22). pp. 5927-5932. ISSN 1520-0442 doi: 10.1175/2010jcli3746.1

Abstract/Summary

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. The significance statistic is not a quantitative measure of how confident we can be of the ‘reality’ of a given result. It is concluded that a significance test very rarely provides useful quantitative information.