https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02773-w
Regular Article
The power spectrum of climate change
1
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, Ø 2200, København, Denmark
2
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Copenhagen, Denmark
Received:
27
February
2022
Accepted:
25
April
2022
Published online:
5
May
2022
Both global, intermediate and local scales of Climate Change have been studied extensively, but a unified diagnostic framework for examining all spatial scales concurrently has remained elusive. Here, we present a new tool-set using spherical harmonics to examine climate change through surface temperature anomalies from 1850 to 2021 on spatial scales ranging from planetary to 50 km scales. We show that the observed temperature anomalies are accurately decomposed in spherical harmonics typically within 0.05 K. This decomposition displays a remarkably simple dependence on spatial scale with a universal shape across seasons and decades. The decomposition separates two distinct regimes by a characteristic turnover-length of approximately 3000 km. The largest scales confirm established trends, while local fluctuations are consistent with 2-dimensional turbulence. We observe a downward cascade, from which it follows that climate change feeds increasing volatility on all spatial scales from 2.000 to 50 km. This increase is primarily driven by growing volatility along longitudes.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022
