On the Long-Term Climate Memory in the Surface Air Temperature Records over Antarctica: A Nonnegligible Factor for Trend Evaluation

In this study, observed temperature records of 12 stations from Antarctica island, coastline, and continental areas are analyzed by means of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). After Monte Carlo significance tests, different long-term climate memory (LTM) behaviors are found: temperatures from coa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of climate 2015-08, Vol.28 (15), p.5922-5934
Main Authors: Yuan, Naiming, Ding, Minghu, Huang, Yan, Fu, Zuntao, Xoplaki, Elena, Luterbacher, Juerg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air temperature
Antarctic regions
Antarctic stations
Antarctic temperatures
Autoregressive processes
Climate
Climate change
Climate models
Coasts
Long term memory
Marine
Memory
Ocean temperature
Oceanic climates
Oceans
Polar environments
Records
Statistical methods
Studies
Surface-air temperature relationships
Temperature
Time series
Trends
White noise
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Summary:In this study, observed temperature records of 12 stations from Antarctica island, coastline, and continental areas are analyzed by means of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). After Monte Carlo significance tests, different long-term climate memory (LTM) behaviors are found: temperatures from coastal and island stations are characterized by significant long-term climate memory whereas temperatures over the Antarctic continent behave more like white noise, except for the Byrd station, which is located in the West Antarctica. It is argued that the emergence of LTM may be dominated by the interactions between local weather system and external slow-varying systems (ocean), and therefore the different LTM behaviors between temperatures over the Byrd station and that over other continental stations can be considered as a reflection of the different climatic environments between West and East Antarctica. By calculating the trend significance with the effect of LTM taken into account, and further comparing the results with those obtained from assumptions of autoregressive (AR) process and white noise, it is found that 1) most of the Antarctic stations do not show any significant trends over the past several decades, and 2) more rigorous trend evaluation can be obtained if the effect of LTM is considered. Therefore, it is emphasized that for air temperatures over Antarctica, especially for the Antarctica coastline, island, and the west continental areas, LTM is nonnegligible for trend evaluation.
ISSN:0894-8755
1520-0442
DOI:10.1175/jcli-d-14-00733.1