Letter from Gilbert P. Compo, Jeffrey S. Whitaker and Prashant D. Sardeshmukh published in the Wall Street Journal correcting the misinterpretation of their work by the opinion piece entitled "The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder" (February 10, 2011) that does not accurately reflect their views.

Letter from Gilbert P. Compo, Jeffrey S. Whitaker and Prashant D. Sardeshmukh published in the Wall Street Journal correcting the misinterpretation of their work by the opinion piece entitled "The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder" (Feb. 10, 2011) that does not accurately reflect their views.

Severe Weather Is Driven by Many Factors

While we appreciate the opportunity to discuss our work, we found that the resulting opinion piece "The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder" (February 10, 2011) does not accurately reflect our views.

As for the statement that the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project, which is a synthesis of weather observations going back to 1871, shows "little evidence of an intensifying weather trend": We did not look at weather specifically, but we did analyze three weather and climate-related patterns that drive weather, including the North Atlantic Oscillation. And while it is true that we did not see trends in the strength of these three patterns, severe weather is driven by many other factors.

The lack of a trend in these patterns cannot be used to state that our work shows no trend in weather. Many researchers have found evidence of trends in storminess and extreme temperature and precipitation in other weather data over shorter periods.

Finally, the article notes that the findings are "contrary to what models predict." But models project forward, while our analysis looked back at historical observations. We see no conflict between the 100-year-projection of changes in weather extremes resulting from additional carbon dioxide and the fact that our look back at three indicators showed no historical trend.

Thank you for this opportunity to clear up any inadvertent misunderstandings about our work, which can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full

Gilbert P. Compo

Research Scientist

University of Colorado at Boulder

Jeffrey S. Whitaker

Meteorologist

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Prashant D. Sardeshmukh

Senior Research Scientist

University of Colorado at Boulder