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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 26: Networks: From Topology to Dynamics IV (joint session of BP, DY, SOE)
DY 26.5: Talk
Thursday, March 25, 2010, 15:15–15:30, H44
The backbone of the climate network — •Jonathan Friedemann Donges1,2, Yong Zou1, Norbert Marwan1, and Jürgen Kurths1,2 — 1Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Humboldt University Berlin, Newtonstr. 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany
We propose a method to reconstruct and analyze a complex network from data generated by a spatio-temporal dynamical system, relying on the nonlinear mutual information of time series analysis and betweenness centrality of complex network theory. We show, that this approach reveals a rich internal structure in complex climate networks constructed from reanalysis and model surface air temperature data. Our novel method uncovers peculiar wave-like structures of high energy flow, that we relate to global surface ocean currents. This points to a major role of the oceanic surface circulation in coupling and stabilizing the global temperature field in the long term mean (140 years for the model run and 60 years for reanalysis data). We find that these results cannot be obtained using classical linear methods of multivariate data analysis, and have ensured their robustness by intensive significance testing.