Local Low Dimensionality of Atmospheric Dynamics

D. J. Patil; Brian R. Hunt; Eugenia Kalnay; James A. Yorke; Edward Ott

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.5878

Local Low Dimensionality of Atmospheric Dynamics

D. J. Patil, Brian R. Hunt, Eugenia Kalnay, James A. Yorke, and Edward Ott

Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5878 – Published 25 June 2001

Abstract

A statistic, the BV (bred vector) dimension, is introduced to measure the effective local finite-time dimensionality of a spatiotemporally chaotic system. It is shown that the Earth’s atmosphere often has low BV dimension, and the implications for improving weather forecasting are discussed.

Received 10 January 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.5878

Authors & Affiliations

D. J. Patil^*,†, Brian R. Hunt^‡, Eugenia Kalnay^§, James A. Yorke^∥, and Edward Ott^¶

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

^*Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Mathematics.
^†Email address: dpatil@ipst.umd.edu
^‡
^§Department of Meteorology.
^∥
^¶Institute for Plasma Research and Departments of Physics and of Electrical Engineering.