APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 81 » Issue 3

Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 729 - 732 (1998)

Indication of a Universal Persistence Law Governing Atmospheric Variability

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Eva Koscielny-Bunde1,2, Armin Bunde1, Shlomo Havlin1,2, H. Eduardo Roman1,3, Yair Goldreich4, and Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber5
1Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Universität Giessen, D-35392 Giessen, Germany
2Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel
3Dipartimento di Fisica and I.N.F.N., Università di Milano, I-20133 Milano, Italy
4Department of Meteorology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel
5Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, D-14412 Potsdam, Germany

Featured in Physics News Update Received 14 January 1998

We study the temporal correlations in the atmospheric variability by 14 meteorological stations around the globe, the variations of the daily maximum temperatures from their average values. We apply several methods that can systematically overcome possible nonstationarities in the data. We find that the persistence, characterized by the correlation C(s) of temperature variations separated by s days, approximately decays C(s)∼s-γ, with roughly the same exponent γ≅0.7 for all stations considered. The range of this universal persistence law seems to exceed one decade, and is possibly even larger than the range of the temperature series considered.


©1998 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v81/p729
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.729
PACS: 92.60.Wc, 02.70.Hm, 64.60.Ak, 92.60.Bh

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