Method of flicker-noise spectroscopy of cosmic ray muon flux variations caused by non-stationary processes

A new method of identifying signals in a statistically noisy non-stationary time series is presented. Unlike in the Fourier and wavelet analyses, in the processing of data no assumptions about the structure of analyzed signal is made. The proposed method of flicker-noise spectroscopy is illustrated with a real time series related to monitoring of solar and cosmic radiation during GLE#72 event using ground-level muon hodoscope. The method is applicable for the analysis of a wide range of various helio- and geophysical processes. (paper)