  Different definitions of links in climate networks may lead to considerably
different network topologies. We construct a network from climate records of
surface level atmospheric temperature in different geographical sites around
the globe using two commonly used definitions of links. Utilizing detrended
fluctuation analysis, shuffled surrogates and separation analysis of maritime
and continental records, we find that one of the major influences on the
structure of climate networks is due to the auto-correlation in the records,
that may introduce spurious links. This may explain why different methods could
lead to different climate network topologies.
