The spectral description of climate change including the 100 ky energy

Core records, both ice and deep-sea, suggest that the dominant character is that of a red-noise process or random walk. Examination of a few typical records supports the inference that the contribution of the Milankovitch frequencies to climate change at most represents only a small fraction of tota...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climate dynamics 2003-02, Vol.20 (4), p.353-363
Main Author: WUNSCH, C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brackish
Climate change
Climate system
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Deep sea
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Freshwater
Geological time
Geophysics. Techniques, methods, instrumentation and models
Ice
Marine
Meteorology
Oceans
Studies
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Summary:Core records, both ice and deep-sea, suggest that the dominant character is that of a red-noise process or random walk. Examination of a few typical records supports the inference that the contribution of the Milankovitch frequencies to climate change at most represents only a small fraction of total climate variance. Most spectral densities are sufficiently "flat" that rates of change will be dominated by the highest frequencies present in the forcing. A broad maximum near 100 ky period can be readily rationalized without invoking an oscillator. One need only suppose that there is an approximate threshold beyond which the climate system collapses. The quasiperiodicity is then governed by a combination of the collapse threshold, the system memory time scale, and the intensity of the stochastic forcing. Changes in the forcing intensity would lead to a shift in the dominant time scale. Some inferred spectral power laws may be inaccurate owing to undersampling of the records.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0930-7575
1432-0894
DOI:10.1007/s00382-002-0279-z