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# 5 Putting it all together

Scientists need a means of calculating how each of the suspects and red herrings have affected the Earth’s temperature over time. Luckily, each factor has its own characteristic pattern (its own ‘fingerprint’) in affecting the temperature record and scientists can analyse these patterns to help deduce how much each factor has contributed to any observed changes.

So how do scientists estimate how each of these suspects and red herrings have affected the climate?

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