Why do you think your paper is highly cited?
Primarily because the issue of confidence in attributing detected
change to climate across diverse analyses was so contentious in the
preparation of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC—Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change—and because so much of the current debate
seems to be focused on obscuring the need for near-term mitigation
behind the haze of uncertainty.
Does it describe a new discovery or a new methodology that's
useful to others?
The probabilistic approach to judging a global coherence argument
can focus the discussion on confidence, but it is the sign-switching
ability of climate stresses—negative impacts along one boundary of
a system coupled with positive impacts along the opposite boundary—that
worked to increase confidence in attributing observed changes
coherently to climate. Other stressors, such as pollution or
land-use change, could not switch signs.
Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's
terms?
The application of the probabilistic approach to a meta-analysis
that incorporated sign-switching sites increased dramatically the
confidence that can be assigned to the conclusion that we have
observed the fingerprint of climate change on natural systems
worldwide.
How did you become involved in this research?
My collaboration with Camille Parmesan began at an IPCC authors'
meeting in Lisbon when the debate over confidence erupted.
Gary Yohe
John E. Andrus Professor of Economics
and
Director of the John E. Andrus Public Affairs Center
Wesleyan University
Middletown, Connecticut, USA
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