Can a Multi-Approach Investigation of the Climate System Lead to More Robust Results in Attribution Studies?

Attribution studies, which investigate the causes of recent global warming by Global Climate Models, show the fundamental role of anthropogenic forcings in driving the temperature behaviour of the last half century. Nevertheless, due to the complex structure and balance of these models, some doubts are expressed about the reliability of their results, actually more in the media than in the scientific community. In any case, due to the potential benefits that can be derived by exploring a complex system from multiple viewpoints and methodological approaches, recently completely different, non-dynamical, data-driven linear and nonlinear approaches have been applied to attribution investigations. This permits to compare the results coming from these distinct analyses and to possibly increase their robustness in order to uphold the hypothesized causal pattern involved in recent global warming. Here we present these approaches and their results, and discuss about the relevance of a multi-approach strategy in the scientific praxis of climate-science investigations.