Past exam of the year 2 of the earth sciences (geology) course of the University of Oxford / 2024 / Paper 3 / 8 / a / iv / Solution

The true daily component has $f_D=1\mathrm{da}{\mathrm{y}}^{-1}$, above machine 3's Nyquist frequency. At sampling times $t_n=2n/3$ days,The last sequence is also produced by a continuous cosine with frequency $0.5\mathrm{da}{\mathrm{y}}^{-1}$ sampled at those same times. Hence the observed peak is the sampled sinusoid aliasIt is not evidence for an additional two-day physical temperature cycle.