Global Warming

In a fascinating paper entitled Anti-persistence in the global temperature anomaly field, researchers L. M. V. Carvalho, A. A. Tsonis, C. Jones, H. R. Rocha, and P. S. Polito report their findings on the persistence of temperature anomalies between 1948 and 2005. They find no evidence of persistence, and on the contrary, they document antipersistence on a scale of 10 years. Antipersistenc is a property of random processes that are not gaussian, ie exhibit long term memory, or in this case, antimemory. An antipersistent random process has a marked tendency to revert to the mean, i.e. to follow a move in one direction, by one in the opposite direction. If this finding is confirmed, we could have the Earth temperature increase for 20 years, and reverse afterwards. Not only can we have this phenomenon, but we should expect it. It is the most likely scenario. In this perspective, there could very well be no evidence of global warming on a scale of more than 20 years.