HR: 1340h
AN: NG23E-0119    [Abstracts]
TI: Links between the Annual, Milankovitch, and Continuum of Temperature Variability
AU: * Huybers, P
EM: phuybers@whoi.edu
AF: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole, MA 02540 United States
AU: Curry, W
EM: wcurry@whoi.edu
AF: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole, MA 02540 United States
AB: Climatic processes are intimately coupled so that understanding variability at any one time-scale requires some understanding of the whole. Spectra of Earth's surface temperature exemplify this interdependence, having a continuum of energy at all time-scales,but whose origins remain poorly understood. One clue is that the scaling of the continuum breaks at centennial time-scales, midway (in log-frequency space) between the annual and Milankovitch insolation forcing bands. From globally distributed instrumental temperature records we show that the continuum between monthly and centennial periods scales with the annual period energy. At longer time-scales, proxy estimates of high-latitude and tropical temperature spectra indicate that the continuum scales with the Milankovitch band energy. Scaling is such that the ratio of high-latitude to tropical variability is large near the annual and Milankovitch insolation forcing bands and diminishes toward centennial time-scales. Apparently, insolation forcing not only controls annual and Milankovitch band temperature responses but also influences the magnitude and scaling of the intervening continuum.
DE: 0429 Climate dynamics (1620)
DE: 0473 Paleoclimatology and paleoceanography (3344, 4900)
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 3255 Spectral analysis (3205, 3280)
DE: 4475 Scaling: spatial and temporal (1872, 3270, 4277)
SC: Nonlinear Geophysics [NG]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005