Statistical Evaluation of Climate Experiments with General Circulation Models: A Parametric Time Series Modeling Approach

A procedure for making statistical inferences about differences between population means from the output of general circulation model (GCM) climate experiments is presented. A parametric time series modeling approach is taken, yielding a potentially mere powerful technique for detecting climatic change than the simpler schemes used heretofore. The application of this procedure is demonstrated through the use of GCM control data to estimate the variance of winter and summer time averages of daily mean surface air temperature. The test application provides estimates of the magnitude of climatic change that the procedure should be able to detect. A related result of the analysis is that autoregressive processes of higher than first order are needed to adequately model the majority of the GCM time series considered.