Long-range persistence of acid deposition

Rescaled range analysis and detrended fluctuation analysis are applied to verify the presence of long-range persistence (LRP) of weekly hydrogen ion deposition (WHD) series in National Atmospheric Deposition Program, USA, for the period 1978–2001. Both methods confirm that WHD fluctuations exhibit fractal Brown motion with two different temporal scaling regimes and LRP exists in the series, indicating that the succeeding WHD are not independent of each other. The fluctuations of WHD series behave as a self-affine fractal with self-similarity. WHD caused by pollution (WHDP) shows scaling behavior similar to that of WHD. The deseasonized WHD/WHDP series display uniform scaling regimes with temporal persistence. The dependence duration may persist 6–9 years, implying that the LRP, which is believed to be related to the self-organized critical behavior of atmosphere in the paper, should be considered in the trend prediction of acid deposition as an important factor.