Abstract
Allen and Tett (1999, herein AT99) introduced a Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression methodology for decomposing patterns of climate change for attribution purposes and proposed the “Residual Consistency Test” (RCT) to check the GLS specification. Their methodology has been widely used and highly influential ever since, in part because subsequent authors have relied upon their claim that their GLS model satisfies the conditions of the Gauss-Markov (GM) Theorem, thereby yielding unbiased and efficient estimators. But AT99 stated the GM Theorem incorrectly, omitting a critical condition altogether, their GLS method cannot satisfy the GM conditions, and their variance estimator is inconsistent by construction. Additionally, they did not formally state the null hypothesis of the RCT nor identify which of the GM conditions it tests, nor did they prove its distribution and critical values, rendering it uninformative as a specification test. The continuing influence of AT99 two decades later means these issues should be corrected. I identify 6 conditions needing to be shown for the AT99 method to be valid.