He extended his research to the study of global precipitation and temperature measurement correlation and performed critical analyses of the quality of traditional water budgeting methods applied to recent[when?]
His team concluded that uncorrected centered-pattern correlation statistics applied to the validation of general circulation prognostication models used to predict large-scale climate change may be inappropriate and may yield erroneous results.
[citation needed] Legates and his coworkers became concerned with the quality of surface instrumental temperature data analysis, treatment and presentation of trends used in the communication of global warming research results.
He co-developed methods to correct biases in gauge-measured precipitation data for wind and temperature effects, with direct applicability in climate change, hydrology and environmental impact studies.
[citation needed] His group observed that gauge undercatch was mostly caused by wind turbulence—especially for snow—and has a significant effect on the calculated Arctic water budget.
[citation needed] Legates and coauthors (including Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, and Timothy F. Ball) authored a controversial (and non peer-reviewed) paper in the journal Ecological Complexity attempting to disprove an increase in Hudson Bay temperatures in the past 70 years, and cautioning about polar bear-human interaction as a likely cause for any observed decline in bear populations.
In this paper the authors expressed doubts regarding the predictive quality of global warming models at the entire Arctic scale and any extrapolation of polar bear population trends.
Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth".
[13] In his testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works regarding the Mann, Bradley and Hughes hockey stick graph, Legates summed up his position as: "Where we differ with Dr. Mann and his colleagues is in their construction of the hemispheric averaged time-series, their assertion that the 1990s are the warmest decade of the last millennium, and that human influences appear to be the only significant factor on globally averaged air temperature.
The study's authors, a team made up of Legates with Dr. Willie Soon, Dr. William M. Briggs, and Lord Christopher Monckton, stated that they somewhat agreed with the IPCC's ideas but found the organization's temperature predictions to be largely overstated.
[22] While detailed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Legates commissioned a set of nine briefs known as the "Climate Change Fliers," released in January 2021.