On The Determinations of Weather, Seasonal, Sub-Seasonal and Climate Scale Variability and Overall Trends in the Atmosphere and Ocean

Abstract

The traditional concepts and definitions of multi-scale “weather”, “seasonal variability”, “sub-seasonal variability”, “climate variability”, “trends” and “climate change” for both the global atmosphere and the global ocean are considered. We build upon existing literature and present new evidence that atmospheric and oceanic temporal multi-scale variability are the result of a mix of well-known frequency and amplitude modulated nonlinear and phenomena that occur simultaneously [1-3]. We harvest representative atmospheric temperature and wind data, oceanic temperature and coastal water level from United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.) agency archives, collected via in-situ and satellite remotely sensed data and employ a mathematical methodology that can decompose nonlinear data. The data decomposition reveals a continuum of well-defined, modulated, internal modes of oscillations, each with broad spectral peaks and each representative of naturally occurring phenomena. We reveal that the conventional notions of weather and seasonal to subseasonal to climate variability, actually constitute an over-lapping continuum, with shorter period oscillations commuting with longer period oscillations onto overall record length trends. We relate these internal, intrinsic modes of variability to naturally occurring causal agents, from relatively high frequency weather to lower frequency seasonal to sub-seasonal to climate scale variability. Correlative relationships between climate factors reveal causal couplings of the oceanic and atmospheric systems.