Quantifying causal pathways of teleconnections

Kretschmer, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2756-9526, Adams, S. V., Arribas, A., Prudden, R., Robinson, N., Saggioro, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9543-6338 and Shepherd, T. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6631-9968 (2021) Quantifying causal pathways of teleconnections. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 102 (12). E2247-E2263. ISSN 1520-0477 doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0117.1

Abstract/Summary

Teleconnections are sources of predictability for regional weather and climate but the relative contributions of different teleconnections to regional anomalies are usually not understood. While physical knowledge about the involved mechanisms is often available, how to quantify a particular causal pathway from data is usually unclear. Here we argue for adopting a causal inference-based framework in the statistical analysis of teleconnections to overcome this challenge. A causal approach requires explicitly including expert knowledge in the statistical analysis, which allows one to draw quantitative conclusions. We illustrate some of the key concepts of this theory with concrete examples of well-known atmospheric teleconnections. We further discuss the particular challenges and advantages these imply for climate science and argue that a systematic causal approach to statistical inference should become standard practice in the study of teleconnections.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/99274
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Mathematics and Statistics Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Meteorological Society
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