Hidden patterns of climate change have been revealed by scientists using a method more normally used to diagnose heart disease . The scientists used multiscale entropy analysis to measure the 'pulse of the planet ' in an attempt to look for subtle changes in temperature on Earth . The technique is normally used by surgeons to detect irregular heartbeats in large amounts of data from echocardiograms . The graph above shows how the entropy - or predictability - of Central European air temperatures have become less predictable over time scales of between 12 months and 70 months . The black lines shows the temperature predictability between 1850 to 1960 while the red lines shows the entropy between 1961 and 2014 . Researchers at the University of Leicester , however , have used it to look at the variability in the temperature in Europe . They found that the climate appears to have become less regular recently when temperatures are examined on times-scales of longer than 12 months . The chances of heatwaves in Europe have dramatically increased in the past decade as a result of warming temperatures , experts have said . Extremely warm summers that would be expected to occur twice a century in the early 2000s are now likely to happen twice a decade , a study from the Met Office found last year . The chances of extreme heatwaves , such as the one in 2003 which led to tens of thousands of deaths across Europe , have also increased tenfold , from a one in 1,000 year event to around one in a century . By the 2040s , such extreme heatwaves could happen every other year if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise , according to the research published in the journal Nature Climate Change . The study is an update of research carried out in 2004 into the heatwave the previous year . It found the likelihood of it happening again has at least doubled as a result of human activity , such as burning fossil fuels . Despite a slowdown in rising global temperatures since the late 1990s , the new study found summer temperatures in central and Mediterranean Europe affected by the 2003 heatwave had increased by 0.81°C ( 1.4°F ) between the 1990s and the period 2004 to 2013 . They say this may be a sign that the regional temperatures are being influenced by more complex feedback systems and may explain why extreme weather events such as heatwaves , floods and cold spells are happening more irregularly . Professor Heiko Balzter , a climate scientist at the University of Leicester who led the study , said : ' I had the idea to apply a new method to the climate data . 'It has been applied a lot to diagnose heart disease , because it is good at detecting regularity and randomness in time-series data . 'We are literally taking the pulse of the planet . 'Interestingly , the changes we found only operated on time-scales longer than about a year . 'On these time-scales the climate seems to have become less predictable . ' Multiscale entropy analysis works by searching data for small patterns of information that appear repeatedly . It many of these chunks are found then the data has low entropy and high regularity . If few are found then the system is harder to predict . The research team , shoe work is published in the journal Climate , used this approach to analyse the Central European variance-adjusted mean monthly air temperature anomalies . They found that air temperatures between 1961 and 2014 have become less predictable than between 1850 and 1960 over time scales of between 12 months and 70 months . Professor Balzter said : 'Evidence is mounting that the temporal dynamics of the climate system are changing at the same time as the average global temperature is increasing due to multiple climate forcings . Heatwaves , like the one above hitting Brighton Beach , have become harder to predict because temperatures patterns across Europe have become more irregular , according to the new research by climate scientists . This map of central Europe shows where entropy has increased ( blue ) and where it has decreased ( red ) This map of central Europe shows where the temperature data had the greatest change in entropy , as shown by the colours where yellow is the greatest change and hardest to predict while white is an entropy change of zero . ' A large number of extreme weather events such as prolonged cold spells , heatwaves , droughts and floods have been recorded around the world in the past 10 years . 'Such changes in the temporal scaling behaviour of climate time-series data can be difficult to detect . 'It is possible that climate system feedbacks are expressed in altered temporal scales of the European temperature time-series data . '
Multiscale entropy analysis is normally used to diagnose heart disease . Scientists at the University of Leicester scientists applied it to climate data . They examined temperature records across Europe for the past 165 years . They found patterns of temperature changes that occur every 12-70 months . However , they found temperatures have become less predictable recently .