Significance tests in climate science

Abstract

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 one can be of the "reality" of a given result. It is concluded that a significance test very rarely provides useful quantitative information. © 2010 American Meteorological Society.