Polyphony of Short-Term Climatic Variations

Abstract

It is widely accepted to believe that humanity is mainly responsible for the worldwide temperature growth during the period of instrumental meteorological observations. This paper aims to demonstrate that it is not so simple. Using a wavelet analysis on the example of the time series of the global mean near-surface air temperature created at the American National Climate Data Center (NCDC), some complex structures of inter-annual to multidecadal global mean temperature variations were discovered. The origin of which seems to be better attributable to the Chandler wobble in the Earth’s Pole motion, the Luni-Solar nutation, and the solar activity cycles. Each of these external forces is individually known to climatologists. However, it is demonstrated for the first time that responses of the climate system to these external forces in their integrity form a kind of polyphony superimposed on a general warming trend. Certainly, the general warming trend as such remains to be unconsidered. However, its role is not very essential in the timescale of a few decades. Therefore, it is this polyphony that will determine climate evolution in the nearest future, i.e., during the time most important for humanity currently.

Keywords

• instrumental time series
• near-surface air temperatures
• external climate forces
• wavelet analysis