Randomness and Earth’s Climate Variability

Abstract

Paleo-Sciences including palaeoclimatology and palaeoecology have accumulated numerous records related to climatic changes. The researchers have usually tried to identify periodic and quasi-periodic processes in these paleoscientific records. In this paper, we show that this analysis is incomplete. As follows from our results, random processes, namely processes with a single-time-constant [Formula: see text] (noise with a Lorentzian noise spectrum), play a very important and, perhaps, a decisive role in numerous natural phenomena. For several of very important natural phenomena the characteristic time constants [Formula: see text] are very similar and equal to [Formula: see text] years. However, this value of [Formula: see text] is not universal. For example, the spectral density fluctuations of the atmospheric radiocarbon [Formula: see text]C are characterized by a Lorentzian with [Formula: see text] years. The frequency dependence of spectral density fluctuations for benthic [Formula: see text]O records contains two Lorentzians with [Formula: see text] years and [Formula: see text] years.