Assessing causal dependencies in climatic indices

We evaluate causal dependencies between thirteen indices that represent large-scale climate patterns (El Nino/Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacifc Decadal Oscillation, etc.) using a recently proposed approach based on a linear approximation of the transfer entropy. We demonstrate that this methodology identifes causal relations that are well-known, as well as it uncovers some relations which, to the best of our knowledge, have not yet been reported in the literature. We also identify signifcant changes in causal dependencies that have occurred in the last three decades.
Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUECSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No 813844. C.M. also acknowledges funding by the ICREA ACADEMIA program of Generalitat de Catalunya and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, Spain, project PID2021-123994NB-C21.
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Postprint (published version)