Long term persistence in the sea surface temperature fluctuations
arXiv:cond-mat/0210077 · doi:10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01662-X
Abstract
We study the temporal correlations in the sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations around the seasonal mean values in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. We apply a method that systematically overcome possible trends in the data. We find that the SST persistence, characterized by the correlation $C(s)$ of temperature fluctuations separated by a time period $s$, displays two different regimes. In the short-time regime which extends up to roughly 10 months, the temperature fluctuations display a nonstationary behavior for both oceans, while in the asymptotic regime it becomes stationary. The long term correlations decay as $C(s) \sim s^{-γ}$ with $γ\sim 0.4$ for both oceans which is different from $γ\sim 0.7$ found for atmospheric land temperature.
14 pages, 5 fiures