Browsing "Climate"
Mar 3, 2014 -

## Warming or Walking? – Stochastic Processes and Temperature Trends

Of all of the statistics that are cited to support the notion of “global warming,” the one that bothers me the most is the statistic claiming that $$n$$ of the last $$m$$ years have been the hottest years on record. For example, it’s not uncommon to hear that “10 of the last 12 years” are the warmest years in a temperature record that goes all the way back to 1880. This is often used as “irrefutable evidence” that mankind is driving up the Earth’s temperature and destroying the planet.

It is understandable that an activist would try to exploit this statistic. Most obviously, it emphasizes that recent global temperatures have been relatively high (where “high” corresponds to an increase of less than one degree Celsius over a 100-year period). The real purpose of repeating this factoid, however, is that it confuses and charms the numerically unsophisticated, leading them to assume that such a concentration of unprecedented, elevated temperatures in recent times is highly unlikely—unless some underlying cause is responsible.

This is quite misleading, however. In fact, it is not difficult to demonstrate that a relatively simple statistical model can account for this result, without requiring any bias toward warming.