Long-time correlations of sea-level and local atmospheric pressure fluctuations at Trieste

A random walk analysis of pressure and sea-level fluctuations from daily data taken at Trieste during the period 1939-2002 is presented. It is shown that the associated time series display long-time autocorrelations up to time scales of several thousand of days, characterized by a Hurst exponent H≈0.70 for sea-level and H≈0.58 for pressure. The corresponding probability distribution functions depart from the Gaussian shape, displaying asymmetric tails. The series are found to be cross-correlated with a cross-correlation coefficient of about -0.76.