Randomness and Earth climate variability

Abstract

Paleo-Sciences including palaeoclimatology and palaeoecology have accumulated numerous records related to climatic changes. The researchers have usually tried to identify periodic and quasi-periodic processes in these paleoscientific records. In this paper, we show that this analysis is incomplete. As follows from our results, random processes, namely processes with a single-time-constant (noise with a Lorentzian noise spectrum), play a very important and, perhaps, a decisive role in numerous natural phenomena. For several of very important natural phenomena the characteristic time constants are very similar and equal to (5-8)x10^3 years. However, this value is not universal. For example, the spectral density fluctuations of the atmospheric radiocarbon 14C are characterized by a Lorentzian with time constant 300 years. The frequency dependence of spectral density fluctuations for benthic 18O records contains two Lorentzians with time constans 8000 years and > 105 years.