Dynamics of the Annual Variation in the Climate Variables of the Earth’s Atmosphere and Their Relation to Solar Activity

Abstract

In this article, the dynamics of the annual variation in the mean monthly values of temperature and precipitation is studied via the expansion of series into natural orthogonal functions according to data from of observations at the Primorskii krai and St. Petersburg weather stations. It is found that the series converge rather quickly: two to three expansion components are sufficient. In this case, the first component of the series expansion of temperature contributes up to 98% to the variation of the basic series. The long-term trend of the annual variation amplitude decrease is revealed by the temporal variations. The second component of the series expansion of temperature contributes ≈0.5% and is apparently related to the general long-term climate warming. A trend toward increasing temperature and precipitation values is observed during the maximum and declining phase of the 11-year cycle of solar activity. In addition, the extreme values of climate variables drift during the declining phase of the 11-year cycle. This seems to be due to a small difference in the length of climate and solar cycles. There is a rather high correlation coefficient between the aa planetary geomagnetic index and the changes in the amplitude of the annual temperature variation.