Can Open Science save us from a solar-driven monsoon?

Numerous studies have been published claiming strong solar influences on the Earth’s weather and climate, many of which include documented errors and false-positives, yet are still frequently used to substantiate arguments of global warming denial. Recently, Badruddin & Aslam (2015) reported a highly significant relationship between the Indian monsoon and the cosmic ray flux. They found strong and opposing linear trends in the cosmic ray flux during composites of the strongest and weakest monsoons since 1964, and concluded that this relationship is causal. They further speculated that it could apply across the entire tropical and sub-tropical belt and be of global importance. However, examining the original data reveals the cause of this false-positive: an assumption that the data’s underlying distribution was Gaussian. Instead, due to the manner in which the composite samples were constructed, the correlations were biased towards high values. Incorrect or problematic statistical analyses such as this are typical in the field of solar-terrestrial studies, and consequently false-positives are frequently published. However, the widespread adoption of Open Science approaches, placing an emphasis on reproducible open-source analyses as demonstrated in this work, could remedy the situation.