INTERDECADAL OSCILLATIONS AND THE WARMING TREND IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TIME-SERIES

THE ability to distinguish a warming trend from natural variability is critical for an understanding of the climatic response to increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations. Here we use singular spectrum analysis 1 to analyse the time series of global surface air temperatures for the past 135 years 2, allowing a secular warming trend and a small number of oscillatory modes to be separated from the noise. The trend is flat until 1910, with an increase of 0.4-degrees-C since then. The oscillations exhibit interdecadal periods of 21 and 16 years, and interannual periods of 6 and 5 years. The interannual oscillations are probably related to global aspects of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon 3. The interdecadal oscillations could be associated with changes in the extratropical ocean circulation 4. The oscillatory components have combined (peak-to-peak) amplitudes of > 0.2-degrees-C, and therefore limit our ability to predict whether the inferred secular warming trend of 0.005-degrees-C yr-1 will continue. This could postpone incontrovertible detection of the greenhouse warming signal for one or two decades.