Readers may be interested in this presentation by Cohn, Lins, Koutsoyiannis and Montanari about the life and work of Harold Hurst, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon of long-term persistence (LTP) while examining records of the flooding of the Nile. The presentation seems to date from the end of last year.
Many of you will know that LTP is pervasive in geoscience datasets, so you will no doubt be amused by this bit about the IPCC's consideration of the phenomenon:
...the SPM does not mention LTP, although it speaks about the internal climate variability, e.g.: “Internal variability will continue to be a major influence on climate, particularly in the near-term and at the regional scale.”
It's pretty amazing, isn't it, that such a fundamental phenomenon should go unmentioned in the summary for policymakers?
There are also some interesting projections into the future using a statistical model, although to hear what was said alongside them would have made them more illuminating still.