Nature Communications (Jun 2019)

Inferring causation from time series in Earth system sciences

  • Jakob Runge,
  • Sebastian Bathiany,
  • Erik Bollt,
  • Gustau Camps-Valls,
  • Dim Coumou,
  • Ethan Deyle,
  • Clark Glymour,
  • Marlene Kretschmer,
  • Miguel D. Mahecha,
  • Jordi Muñoz-Marí,
  • Egbert H. van Nes,
  • Jonas Peters,
  • Rick Quax,
  • Markus Reichstein,
  • Marten Scheffer,
  • Bernhard Schölkopf,
  • Peter Spirtes,
  • George Sugihara,
  • Jie Sun,
  • Kun Zhang,
  • Jakob Zscheischler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10105-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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Questions of causality are ubiquitous in Earth system sciences and beyond, yet correlation techniques still prevail. This Perspective provides an overview of causal inference methods, identifies promising applications and methodological challenges, and initiates a causality benchmark platform.