CRISTINA MASOLLER - What have we learned about the Earth climate dynamics by using complex networks and nonlinear data analysis tools?

• Coloquios

Cristina Masoller. 

Aula Seminario, 2do piso, Pabellón I. 

Climate networks are located at the cross roads of three highly active interdisciplinary fields: climate dynamics, complex networks and time-series analysis. In this talk I will summarise the results obtained in our group within the framework of the LINC project: we have focused in constructing climate networks by using nonlinear data analysis tools, and I will discuss their interpretation in terms of known climate phenomena. Specifically, climate networks have been constructed by using ordinal mutual information, conditional mutual information and a Granger causality estimator. I will discuss the methods used to infer lag-times and to estimate links’ significance. Our analysis has uncovered correlations among different geographical regions, some of them very well limited in space and in time scale. I will try to integrate “the results” (the inferred networks) and the “causes” (known atmospheric and oceanic phenomena): I will show that the uncovered networks are fully consistent with the present understanding of climate phenomena. Finally, I will discuss relevant open issues for future work.