Global Surface Temperature Variability And Trends And Attribution To Carbon Emissions

Abstract

We investigate the patterns of monthly time series of global ocean surface temperature and global air temperatures over the land surface, and combination thereof, from 1850 to 2018. By employing an empirical mathematical methodology, we decompose the non-linear global temperature time series and confirm patterns of frequency and amplitude modulated, discreet internal modes of variability within the two basic time series and the third, combined, time series. We find periods of warming and cooling on both the surfaces of the ocean and atmosphere over land with prominent seasonal, annual, inter-annual, multi-year, decadal, multi-decadal, and centennial modes, riding atop overall warming trends. Our calculated overall rates of warming differ significantly from the estimates of the Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change (Bernstein et al ., 2008; Stocker et al ., 2013). We find the oceanic warming rate to be less than two-thirds of surface air over land, making the ocean a regulator or comparative heat capacitor and the dominant player in determining global surface temperatures. The ocean has an enormous heat capacity relative to that of the atmosphere. Next, by employing an econometrics-based statistical formula, we establish a causal relationship between fossil fuel burning and global surface temperatures, which definitively links the overall trends in planetary surface temperature rise, to the overall upward trend in fossil fuel burning. Our study also found that there is a 1-year phase lag of global temperatures to fossil fuel burning both on land and in the sea.