Abstract
An attempt was made to specify Hawaiian winter rainfall from simultaneous Pacific sea surface temperature (SST). Over the period 1949–69,December–February Oahu rainfall had a multiple correlation of 0.83 with the simultaneous values of two SST differences in the North Pacific. How-ever, use of this relationship for the years 1970–77 revealed that little success in specifying rainfall would have been achieved. A contributory reason is “artificial predictability.” Further, a multiple-regression formula baud on the whole period gave significantly more large errors in 1967–77 than in 1949–66, suggesting that the dominant influences on the rainfall have changed.
