Comment on "Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature" by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter
Abstract
We demonstrate an alternative correlation between the El Ni\~no Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and global temperature variation to that shown by McLean et al. [2009]. We show 50% of the variation in RATPAC-A tropospheric temperature (and 54% of HadCRUT3) is explained by a novel cumulative Southern Oscillation Index (cSOI) term in a simple linear regression. We review evidence from physical and statistical research in support of the hypothesis that accumulation of the effects of ENSO can produce natural multi-decadal warming trends. Although it is not possible to reliably determine the relative contribution of anthropogenic forcing and SOI accumulation from multiple regression models due to collinearity, these analyses suggest that an accumulation ratio cSOI/SOI of 4.81.5% and up to 92% is sufficient for ENSO to play a large part in the global mean temperature trend since 1960.