TY - JOUR

T1 - Detection of coherent oceanic structures via transfer operators

AU - Froyland, Gary

AU - Padberg, Kathrin

AU - England, Matthew H.

AU - Treguier, Anne Marie

PY - 2007/6/1

Y1 - 2007/6/1

N2 - Coherent nondispersive structures are known to play a crucial role in explaining transport in nonautonomous dynamical systems such as ocean flows. These structures are difficult to extract from model output as they are Lagrangian by nature and not revealed by the underlying Eulerian velocity fields. In the last few years heuristic concepts such as finite-time Lyapunov exponents have been used in an attempt to detect barriers to oceanic transport and thus identify regions that trap material such as nutrients and phytoplankton. In this Letter we pursue a novel, more direct approach to uncover coherent regions in the surface ocean using high-resolution model velocity data. Our method is based upon numerically constructing a transfer operator that controls the surface transport of particles over a short period. We apply our technique to the polar latitudes of the Southern Ocean.

AB - Coherent nondispersive structures are known to play a crucial role in explaining transport in nonautonomous dynamical systems such as ocean flows. These structures are difficult to extract from model output as they are Lagrangian by nature and not revealed by the underlying Eulerian velocity fields. In the last few years heuristic concepts such as finite-time Lyapunov exponents have been used in an attempt to detect barriers to oceanic transport and thus identify regions that trap material such as nutrients and phytoplankton. In this Letter we pursue a novel, more direct approach to uncover coherent regions in the surface ocean using high-resolution model velocity data. Our method is based upon numerically constructing a transfer operator that controls the surface transport of particles over a short period. We apply our technique to the polar latitudes of the Southern Ocean.

KW - Didactics of Mathematics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=34547247743&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/2f8c991e-cff7-3bfb-8c0b-bdd1d431c2fc/

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.224503

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.224503

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 17677849

AN - SCOPUS:34547247743

VL - 98

JO - Physical Review Letters

JF - Physical Review Letters

SN - 0031-9007

IS - 22

M1 - 224503

ER -