Contrasting the complexity of the climate of the past 122,000 years and recent 2000 years

The complexity of the climate of the past 122;000 years and recent 2000 years was investigated by analyzing the δ (18) O records of ice cores based on the sample entropy (SampEn) method and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity. In using SampEn method, the climate complexity is measured by the sample entropy, which is a modified approximate entropy defined in terms of the occurring probability of new modes in a record. A larger sample entropy reflects a higher probability to spot a new mode in the data, and in this sense signals a larger complexity of the sample. The δ (18) O record of the past 122,000-year is found to have smaller SampEn than the recent 2000-year. This result suggests that the climate of the past 122;000-year has less complexity than that of the recent 2000 years, even though the record for the former exhibits stronger fluctuations and multifractality than the latter. This diagnosis is additionally supported by calculations of LZ complexity, which has smaller value for the record of the past 122;000 years than the recent 2000 years. Our theoretical findings may further contribute to ongoing explorations into the nonlinear statistical character of the climate change.