References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-7-629-2007

Technical Note: Long-term memory effect in the atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa

Varotsos

¹ Assimakopoulos

M.-N.

¹ Efstathiou

Department of Applied Physics, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

09 02 2007

7 3 629 634

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The monthly mean values of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration derived from in-situ air samples collected at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, USA during 1958–2004 (the longest continuous record available in the world) are analyzed by employing the detrended fluctuation analysis to detect scaling behavior in this time series. The main result is that the fluctuations of carbon dioxide concentrations exhibit long-range power-law correlations (long memory) with lag times ranging from four months to eleven years, which correspond to 1/f noise. This result indicates that random perturbations in the carbon dioxide concentrations give rise to noise, characterized by a frequency spectrum following a power-law with exponent that approaches to one; the latter shows that the correlation times grow strongly. This feature is pointing out that a correctly rescaled subset of the original time series of the carbon dioxide concentrations resembles the original time series. Finally, the power-law relationship derived from the real measurements of the carbon dioxide concentrations could also serve as a tool to improve the confidence of the atmospheric chemistry-transport and global climate models.

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