Power spectral density scaling with frequency f as 1/ f ^β and β ≈ 1 is widely found in natural and socioeconomic systems. Consequently, it has been suggested that such self-similar spectra reflect the universal dynamics of complex phenomena. Here, we show that for a superposition of uncorrelated pulses with a power-law distribution of duration times the estimated scaling exponents β¯ ...

Paleoclimate proxy records have non-negligible uncertainties that arise from both the proxy measurement and the dating processes. Knowledge of the dating uncertainties is important for a rigorous propagation to further analyses, for example, for identification and dating of stadial– interstadial transitions in Greenland ice core records during glacial intervals, for comparing the variability in ...

A remaining carbon budget (RCB) estimates how much CO2 we can emit and still reach a specific temperature target. The RCB concept is attractive since it easily communicates to the public and policymakers, but RCBs are also subject to uncertainties. The expected warming levels for a given carbon budget has a wide uncertainty range, which increases with less ambitious targets, i.e., with higher CO2 ...

For dengue fever and other seasonal epidemics we show how the stability of the preceding inter-outbreak period can predict subsequent total outbreak magnitude, and that a feasible stability metric can be computed from incidence data alone. As an observable of a dynamical system, incidence data contains information about the underlying mechanisms: climatic drivers, changing serotype pools, the ecology ...

We show that in order to have a scaling description of the climate system that is not inherently non-stationary, the rapid shifts between stadial and interstadial conditions during the last glaciation cannot be included in the scaling law. The same is true for the 5 shifts between the glacial and interglacial states in the quaternary climate. When these events are omitted from a scaling analysis ...

The temporal fluctuations in global mean surface temperature are an example of a geophysical quantity that can be described using the notions of long-range persistence and scale invariance/scaling, but this description has suffered from lack of a generally accepted physical explanation. Processes with these statistical signatures can arise from nonlinear effects, for instance, through cascade-like ...

Melting of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) in response to anthropogenic global warming poses a severe threat in terms of global sea-level rise (SLR)1 . Modelling and palaeoclimate evidence suggest that rapidly increasing temperatures in the Arctic can trigger positive feedback mechanisms for the GrIS, leading to self-sustained melting^2–4 , and the GrIS has been shown to permit several ...

A two-dimensional stochastic–diffusive energy balance model (EBM) formulated on a sphere by G. R. North et al. is explored and generalized. Instantaneous and frequency-dependent spatial autocorrelation functions and local temporal power spectral densities are computed for local sites and for spatially averaged surface temperature signals up to the global scale. On time scales up to the relaxation ...

Filtered Poisson processes are often used as reference models for intermittent fluctuations in physical systems. Such a process is here extended by adding a noise term, either as a purely additive term to the process or as a dynamical term in a stochastic differential equation. The lowest order moments, probability density function, auto-correlation function and power spectral density are derived ...

One of the most intriguing facets of the climate system is that it exhibits variability across all temporal and spatial scales; pronounced examples are temperature and precipitation. The structure of this variability, however, is not arbitrary. Over certain spatial and temporal ranges, it can be described by scaling relationships in the form of power laws in probability density distributions and ...