Multi-Decadal Trends of Global Surface Temperature:A Broken Line with Alternating~30 yr Linear Segments?

We investigate global temperature data produced by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU) and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature consortium (BEST). We first fit the 1850-2010 data with polynomials of degrees 1 to 9. A significant ~60-yr oscillation is accounted for as soon as degree 4 is reached. This oscillation is even better modeled as a broken line, more precisely a series of ~30-yr long linear segments, with slope breaks (singularities) in ~1904, ~1940, and ~1974 (±3 yr), and a possible recent occurrence at the turn of the 20th century. Oceanic indices PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) have undergone major changes (respectively of sign and slope) roughly at the same times as the temperature slope breaks. This can be interpreted with a system of oceanic non-linear coupled oscillators with abrupt mode shifts. Thus, the Earth’s climate may have entered a new mode (a new ~30-yr episode) near the turn of the 20th century: no further temperature increase, a dominantly negative PDO index and a decreasing AMO index might be expected for the next decade or two.

On the Diversity of Long-Term Temperature Responses to Varying Levels of Solar Activity at Ten European Observatories

We analyze ten of the longest (127 to 230 year-long) time series of European daily temperatures available from five different Köppen-Geiger climate classes. We split these according to the level of solar cycle activity (H for “higher than median” and L for “lower than median”). This reveals coherent patterns in the temperature differences: when TH-TL?are stacked according to their calendar date, the daily averages from January 1 to December 31st disclose characteristic features in addition to the dominant annual seasonal wave, namely variations up to 2°C lasting for about 1.5 to 3 months. The five observatories at intermediate latitudes in a band from Oxford in the West to Prague in the East (same climate class) have very similar signatures. These similarities are most unlikely to be due to pure chance (confirmed by confidence levels in excess of 99% with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Kuiper nonparametric tests). The TH-TL patterns carry a regional signature, modulated by a more local response function. On the other hand, northern European observatories (St Petersburg and Arkhangelsk), those south of the Alps (Milan and Bologna), and the easternmost one in Astrakhan, corresponding to different climate classes, have different signatures. Similarly, preliminary study of long air pressure recordings confirms what emerges from the analysis of temperatures. These new observations lead us to conclude that the climate in different regions presents different responses to variations in solar activity. Moreover, the distributions of the lower, middle, and higher quartiles of the temperature and pressure indices in solar cycles with high versus low activity are significantly different, providing further robust statistical confirmation to this conclusion (confidence level higher to much higher than 99% using the Kuiper test).