A universal model to characterize different multi-fractal behaviors of daily temperature records over China

The multi-fractal properties of surface air temperature over China are studied through Multi-fractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA). It is shown that there indeed exists the multi-fractal phenomenon in daily surface air temperature time series, reflecting a great deal of fluctuations at various time scales. The multi-fractal properties can be characterized very well by a universal generalized binomial multiplicative cascade model with only two parameters a and b. For different stations, the width of singularity spectrum f(α) is different, indicating different strengths of temperature multi-fractal behavior from station to station.