Emergence of global scaling behaviour in the coupled Earth-atmosphere interaction.

Bijan Fallah,Abbas Ali Saberi,Sahar Sodoudi

doi:10.1038/srep34005

Bijan Fallah, Abbas Ali Saberi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep34005

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Abstract

Scale invariance property in the global geometry of Earth may lead to a coupled interactive behaviour between various components of the climate system. One of the most interesting correlations exists between spatial statistics of the global topography and the temperature on Earth. Here we show that the power-law behaviour observed in the Earth topography via different approaches, resembles a scaling law in the global spatial distribution of independent atmospheric parameters. We report on observation of scaling behaviour of such variables characterized by distinct universal exponents. More specifically, we find that the spatial power-law behaviour in the fluctuations of the near surface temperature over the lands on Earth, shares the same universal exponent as of the global Earth topography, indicative of the global persistent role of the static geometry of Earth to control the steady state of a dynamical atmospheric field. Such a universal feature can pave the way to the theoretical understanding of the chaotic nature of the atmosphere coupled to the Earth’s global topography.

Highlights

Using two different approaches of scaling recognition, we have found a novel global scaling in various atmospheric parameters coupled to the statistical properties of the underlying topography of Earth
We employed a novel approach to extract the global scaling behaviour giving rise to some universal exponents classifying different atmospheric variables. Such scaling and possible hidden symmetries can pave the way for various exact results in such chaotic and complex systems[25]
Existence of power-law spectrum is the base for the emergence of scale invariance property e.g., as fractal isolines

Summary

Introduction

We reexamined power spectra as a scaling analysis of height on the ETOPO2v2 topography data. The scaling in the atmospheric surface variables is studied using a different analysis that is based on the variances of different zonal transects (different scaling) of the data. We present a new technique to capture the power-law behaviour in the climate variables (e.g., near surface temperatures).

Results

Conclusion