LAUSR

Abstract There is much debate today about the role of carbon dioxide in global warming. In this study we examine the intrinsic dynamics of the temporal evolution of the carbon dioxide amount and temperature by analyzing instrumental measurements data and paleo-reconstructed data to see if this dynamics remains stable in terms of its internal properties. The paleoecological data were based on over 20,000 sea surface temperature point reconstructions obtained from ocean sediment cores using alkenone unsaturation indices, applying ratios of Mg/Ca in planktonic foraminifera, and based upon microfossil abundances. The results of the analysis of the instrumental data fluctuations in land-ocean temperature and carbon dioxide in the period March 1958–April 2017, showed that the long-term dynamics of the fluctuations of these two parameters exhibit persistent power-law type behavior. This type of behavior also emerges from the same analysis of the reconstructed global mean sea temperature and carbon dioxide amount fluctuations over the past 805 thousand years. In addition, the time series of both parameters are characterized by multifractality for time scales of less than 4 years. Consequently, the intrinsic properties of carbon dioxide and global temperature have not changed over the past nearly one million years.