Rypina, I. I., Getscher, T., Pratt, L. J., & Ozgokmen, T., 2022. Applying dynamical systems techniques to real ocean drifters. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 29(4), 345–361. https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-29-345-2022
(a) Trajectories of the SPLASH drifters, with their positions at the release time, 1 day, and 3 days shown by black, blue, and green dots, respectively. The inset shows the geographical location of the experiment site, with black box indicating the domain shown in the main panel. (b) Real-drifter-based Finite Time Lyapunov Exponents (FTLEs) mapped to the initial positions of the drifters using 1-day-long segments of trajectories. (Figure adapted from Rypina et al., 2022)
Techniques from the dynamical systems theory have been widely used to study transport, quantify the intensity of stirring, and measure Lagrangian coherence in oceanic flows. However, they have been almost exlusively applied to numerically simulated trajectories. This paper, on the other hand, applies 6 different dynamical systems techniques to real ocean drifter trajectories from the massive release of 144 drifters in the Gulf of Mexico. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive comparison of the performance of different dynamical systems techniques with application to real drifters.