Measurements of Chaos in the Ocean,
Abstract
The theory of dissipative chaos appears to promise great insights into the behavior of natural systems like the ocean. Results based upon model simulations show the possibility that phenomena such as El Nino are chaotic Chaotic phenomena also demonstrate that certain traditional methods are not appropriate for chaotic systems. For example a perturbation from the linear solution provides no insight into the behavior of the nonlinear system if that system is chaotic, even if the nonlinear terms are small. The existence of chaos implies an inherent limit to the predictability of a system, this is one reason why it is important to determine if a system is chaotic. However, when one attempts to make estimates of measures of chaos (dimensions, Lyapunov exponents, etc.) from oceanographic data one is faced with the fact that the methods that quantify chaotic properties of systems from data require an enormous number of degrees of freedom for any reasonable degree of confidence. Again traditional analysis techniques can make matters worse and not better. An example of this is the use of a smoothing filter: the filter can increase the dimension of the resulting data set by as much as 1.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADP008745
Entities
People
- Everett F. Carter Jr
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School