Randomness and Earth climate variability

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the significant role of random processes with specific time constants in natural climate variability, challenging the traditional focus on periodic phenomena in paleo-climatic records.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of Lorentzian noise processes with characteristic time constants in understanding climate variability, expanding beyond periodic analysis.

Findings

Random processes with specific time constants are crucial in climate phenomena.

Characteristic time constants range from hundreds to thousands of years.

Lorentzian noise spectra are observed in various paleoclimate records.

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 (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 are very similar and equal to (5-8)x10^3 years. However, this value is not universal. For example, the spectral density fluctuations of the atmospheric radiocarbon 14C are characterized by a Lorentzian with time constant 300 years. The frequency dependence of spectral density fluctuations for benthic 18O records contains two Lorentzians with time constans 8000 years and > 105 years.