Scaling effect in planetary waves over Antarctica

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) was applied to the total ozone planetary waves 1 and 2 at the middle and high latitudes of the southern hemisphere that had been acquired by daily Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) total ozone observations since 1979. The main aim of the analysis was to examine the ozone layer as a system invariant in a wide range of scales characterized by the fractal structure, and to search for the existence of long-range correlations. The results show that fluctuations in the amplitude of wave 1 obey persistent long-range power-law correlations for time scales greater than about 4 days and less than about 3 months. This suggests that these fluctuations in small time intervals are closely related to the fluctuations in longer time intervals in a power-law fashion (when the time intervals vary from about 4 days to about 3 months). Similar analysis applied to the amplitude of wave 2 revealed that this wave does not exhibit long-range correlations.