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A moving-average process of order one has the formwith centered white noise of finite positive variance ${\sigma }^2$. Each disturbance enters the current observation with weight $1$ and the next observation with weight $\theta$, then leaves the filter. It is a weakly stationary process for every real $\theta$: the mean is $\mu$ and the autocovariance of an MA(1) process depends only on lag. Strong white noise additionally makes it a strictly stationary process. No $|\theta |<1$ restriction is needed for stationarity.

For a worked observation calculation, take $\mu =10$, $\theta =0.7$, and consecutive noise values ${\epsilon }_{t-1}=-1$, ${\epsilon }_t=2$, ${\epsilon }_{t+1}=0$. Then $X_t=11.3$ and $X_{t+1}=11.4$; the same disturbance $2$ appears in both. If ${\sigma }^2=1$, the variance is $1.49$, the lag-one autocovariance is $0.7$, and the lag-one autocorrelation is $70/149\simeq 0.4698$. All higher-lag autocorrelations vanish, as shown in autocorrelation.

An MA(1) is useful for brief dependence caused by overlapping disturbances or measurements. Its name refers to a weighted moving sum of noise; its weights need not be positive or sum to one, and it differs from the data smoother in seasonal extraction by a centred moving average. Under strong white noise, observations more than one interval apart depend on disjoint independent noise families and are independent. Under weak white noise, the same cutoff establishes only uncorrelated random variables.

Invertibility of a moving-average model is a separate question: can the specified driving noise be recovered by a stable linear filter of present and past observations? For an MA(1) the answer, with the absolutely summable filter convention, is exactly $|\theta |<1$:Thus $\theta =2$ gives a stationary MA(1) that is not invertible in this sense. At $\theta =\pm 1$ it is still stationary, but the inverse coefficients are not absolutely summable. The case $\theta =0$ is simply shifted white noise. See Bartlett, lecture 5: MA(1) and stable invertibility.

The autoregressive polynomial factors as $(1-0.4z)(1+0.7z)$, with zerosBoth have modulus greater than one. The causality root criterion for an autoregressive model therefore gives a causal stationary solution. The moving-average polynomial has its only zero at $-2$, also outside the unit circle, so the invertibility of a moving-average model holds. There is no common root to cancel.

To use unit-variance white noise, put $W_t=Z_t/2$. One suitable pair isThen $\tilde{\varphi }(B)X_t=\tilde{\theta }(B)W_t$ with $W\sim \mathrm{WN}(0,1)$. The factor two changes the innovation scale, not the zero of the moving-average polynomial.

The selected model is a moving-average process of order one, with the plus-sign convention used by R:The Gaussian likelihood function models innovations as independent $N(0,{\sigma }_{\epsilon }^2)$. Its autocovariance is $\gamma (0)={\sigma }_{\epsilon }^2(1+{\theta }^2)$, $\gamma (1)={\sigma }_{\epsilon }^2\theta$, and zero at larger lags, with autocorrelation $\rho (1)=\theta /(1+{\theta }^2)\simeq 0.4631$. The estimated coefficient has modulus less than one, giving invertibility of a moving-average model; a finite moving-average process is stationary regardless of this invertibility restriction.

The original plots show fluctuations around a roughly constant level, no persuasive deterministic trend, and a conspicuous positive lag-one correlation with the other plotted correlations within the approximate sampling bands. They make a stationary nonseasonal working model reasonable for this short series. stationary=TRUE excludes differenced alternatives, and seasonal=FALSE excludes seasonal ARIMA terms. Neither option is proved by a 60-day plot: annual temperature seasonality cannot be excluded from two months, and a longer record or residual diagnostics might require a different model. The options are reasonable local simplifications, not universal statements about temperature dynamics.