Abstract
Abstract. In order to have a scaling description of the climate system that is not inherently non-stationary, the rapid shifts between stadials and interstadials during the last glaciation (the Dansgaard-Oeschger events) cannot be included in the scaling law. The same is true for the shifts between the glacial and interglacial states in the Quaternary climate. When these events are omitted from a scaling analysis the climate noise is consistent with a 1/f law on timescales from months to 105 years. If the shift events are included, the effect is a break in the scaling with an apparent 1/fβ law, with β > 1, for the low frequencies. No evidence of multifractal intermittency has been found in any of the temperature records investigated, and the events are not a natural consequence of multifractal scaling.
Highlights
The temporal variations in Earth’s surface temperature are well described as scaling on an extended range of timescales
The scaling estimated from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) data for glacial periods follows closely the scaling of the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) data analysed as a single time series
For the periods of the EPICA record that corresponds to ice ages, we find wavelet-based structure functions that are closer to power-laws than what is observed in the NGRIP record
Summary
The temporal variations in Earth’s surface temperature are well described as scaling on an extended range of timescales. A value β > 0 would imply that variability increases with scale, a property that (if it were valid on a large range of timescales) would lead to levels of temperature variability inconsistent with reality It is a natural a priori working hypothesis that Earth’s typical temperature fluctuations, the climate noise, is characterised by β 1. The main message of this paper is that the 1/f noise characterisation of the temporal fluctuations in global mean surface temperature is very robust It is an accurate description for the Holocene climate, but it is valid under both stadial and interstadial conditions during glaciations, and during both glacial and interglacial conditions in the quaternary climate.
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