Space-Only Fingerprinting

I review a new approach to climate detection and attribution called space-only fingerprinting. This new approach can detect climate changes based only on the spatial structure of the forced response, leaving the temporal component to be inferred from data. In contrast to traditional fingerprinting, which introduces a scaling factor to correct the overall magnitude, space-only fingerprinting can correct the entire time trajectory of the forced response. Also, space-only fingerprinting results is a modest increase in confidence intervals compared to traditional fingerprinting. I argue that a small increase in uncertainty is a small price to pay for the ability to correct the time trajectory of the forced response. The method is illustrated on CMIP simulations, where it is shown that space-only fingerprinting can detect anthropogenic aerosols in situations in which traditional fingerprinting cannot.