Study of structural break points in global and hemispheric temperature series by piecewise regression.

The study of climate trends taking into consideration possible structural changes is important for understanding climate development characterized by a stochastic trend or by a determined one. In the paper global and hemisphere temperature anomalies are modeled by piecewise linear regression and break points in the temperature evolution are found. It was demonstrated that the used method allowed finding of breaks characterized by long time trends (low frequency processes) as well as abrupt changes (fast frequency processes). The obtained break points for slow temperature change are close to the ones found by other authors however additional conditions (as segment length, gradient and others) are not used here. The results for higher break point numbers are like the ones of step slope models. It was demonstrated that the successive phases of warming and cooling and most of the break points subdividing these periods in the Northern Hemisphere are introduced by the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Because the strong quasi periodicity of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation the authors recommend the removal of its influence on the temperature from the temperature series before studies of trends or structural changes. The Northern Hemisphere temperature data after the removal of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation influence show structures like the Southern Hemisphere temperatures. Model selection by the Schwarz–Bayesian Information Criterion developed by Liu, Wu and Zidek (LWZ criterion) shows that models with only one break point are to be preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]