Random Walks in the Ocean General Circulation Provide a Refreshing New Look for World Climate

Abstract

The results of a series of global models show that bounded random walks are the dominant process that determines the observed surface temperature structure, both under equilibrium thermal conditions and also importantly during periods of global warming and cooling. This thermodynamic variability is an innate property of climate, on both baroclinic and barotropic scales, in an analogous way that synoptic variability is an innate property of weather.