Time scales of the European surface air temperature variability: The role of the 7-8 year cycle

Abstract

Air temperature variability on different time scales exhibits recurring patterns and quasi-oscillatory phenomena. Climate oscillations with the period about 7-8 years have been observed in many instrumental records in Europe. Although these oscillations are weak if considering their amplitude, they might have nonnegligible influence on temperature variability on shorter time scales due to cross-scale interactions recently observed by Paluš (2014). In order to quantify the cross-scale influence, we propose a simple conditional mean approach which estimates the effect of the cycle with the period close to 8 years on the amplitude of the annual cycle in surface air temperature (SAT) in the range 0.7-1.4°C and the effect on the overall variability of the SAT anomalies (SATA) leads to the changes 1.5-1.7°C in the annual SATA means. The strongest effect in the winter SATA means reaches 4-5°C in central European station and reanalysis data.