Rossby Waves Detection in the CO2 and Temperature Multilayer Climate Network

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the main factor of global warming. Carbon satellites have proven that CO₂ concentrations have nonuniform spatio-temporal distributions. The relationship between unevenly distributed CO₂ and global surface air temperature (SAT) is seldom known. The success of complex networks provides an opportunity to address this issue. This paper proposes a multilayer climate network approach to identify the impacts of nonuniform CO₂ on SAT. The results show that the probability density function (PDF) of degrees, weighted degrees, and link lengths follows power-law distributions. A large fraction of strong correlation links resides in proximal distance (smaller than 2,000 km), indicating that CO₂ nodes are strongly connected to the surrounding SAT nodes. The enhanced distributions of large positive weights, time delays, and degree patterns are all consistent with the properties of Rossby waves. This framework can be useful for predicting future climate changes and policy-making for carbon reduction.