NAO drives European winter heating demand

NAO is the North Atlantic Oscillation, the pressure seesaw that steers Atlantic storms into or away from Europe. This tests whether its drives European winter heating demand. Tested at one and three months; nothing beat chance.

Conclusion: Null

No effect at any horizon tested, across 2 tests.

Every test, against the significance threshold

persistence-robust p · left is stronger evidence
00.050.250.513m1m
Filled markers fall below the 0.05 threshold before multiple-testing correction; hollow markers do not. Correction is applied across the whole batch, so an individual marker clearing the line is not a result on its own.
Best p
0.692
directional
Best q
0.82
BH-FDR
Fired
0/2
at p<0.05
Survived
0
q ≤ 0.10

Method

Hypothesis

NAO drives European winter heating demand

Rule

prior = +1 # higher signal -> higher returns
function test(horizon h):
basket = inverse_vol_weighted_mean(instruments)
y = sum(basket, t+1 .. t+h) # strictly forward
x = signal[t] # known at t
beta, t_stat = OLS(y ~ x) with Newey-West HAC
null = [slope(y, roll(x, k)) for k in all offsets]
p = (count(null beyond beta) + 1) / (len(null) + 1)
return beta, t_stat, p
reject if Benjamini-Hochberg q <= 0.10 across the whole screen

Evaluation

Table 1 · Test results

3m1m+1.9-1.9
HorizonnβHAC tHAC pShift p (dir)Shift p (2-sided)
3m116-0.0048-0.750.4520.6920.638
1m116-0.0056-1.860.0620.8940.213
Directional p-value scores the pre-declared prior; the two-sided value makes no directional assumption.

Reference

Instruments

last price and one-month change, live from Yahoo Finance
SymbolNotes
EWGiShares MSCI Germany ETF — exchange-traded fund listed on NYSEArca, in USD.
EWUiShares MSCI United Kingdom ETF — exchange-traded fund listed on NYSEArca, in USD.

Sample

monthly, per signal availability

Sources

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). v4, global land–ocean temperature anomaly. data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp
NOAA Climate Prediction Center. Teleconnection indices. AO, NAO, PNA, SAM. www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml
NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Climate indices. ONI, Niño 3.4, MEI v2, DMI, PDO, AMO, TNA, QBO, solar flux. psl.noaa.gov/data/climateindices/list
Royal Observatory of Belgium. Sunspot Number. SILSO, monthly mean. www.sidc.be/SILSO/datafiles
Yahoo Finance. Historical market prices. Adjusted close, month-end. Retrieved with yfinance. finance.yahoo.com

Revision history

RevStageStatusChange
01DraftDirection and criteria fixed before the experiment ran
02TestedNull2 tests at 1 and 3 months; corrected across the 94-test screen
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