Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis of Temperature Reanalysis Data over Greece

Abstract

The Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA) is used to examine the scaling behavior and the multifractal characteristics of the mean daily temperature time series of the ERA-Interim reanalysis data for a domain centered over Greece. The results showed that the time series from all grid points exhibit the same behavior: they have a positive long-term correlation and their multifractal structure is insensitive to local fluctuations with a large magnitude. Special emphasis was given to the spatial distribution of the main characteristics of the multifractal spectrum: the value of the Hölder exponent, the spectral width, the asymmetry, and the truncation type of the spectra. The most interesting finding is that the spatial distribution of almost all spectral parameters is decisively determined by the land–sea distribution. The results could be useful in climate research for examining the reproducibility of the nonlinear dynamics of reanalysis datasets and model outputs.