Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Global Climate Networks & Significant El Niño Effects

Significant temperature changes due to El Niño have only been detected in different parts of the world when they were measured in a restricted area of the Pacific Ocean. The authors found that, based on the same temperature records from various geographical zones around the world, the dynamics of a climate record is significantly influenced by El Niño. Many links of the network are broken during an El Niño event, a specific and sensitive measure of El Niño events is comprised of the number of links that survive. These links, representing correlations between temperatures in different sites, are more stable, the links being broken during El Niño periods by fast fluctuations of the correlations observed during these periods.

Summary

The authors¹ have developed a method enabling the following of large changes over time of an underlying network structure that involves observing the fluctuations in the correlations between the nodes. Using this method blinking links, that appear and disappear over a short time period, are tracked, and this method assumes structural changes are the cause of this behaviour. Links with large time delays comprise the majority of links that break during El Niño events.

Sources & Further reading

1. Yamasaki, K., A. Gozolchiani, and S. Havlin. "Climate Networks around the Globe Are Significantly Affected by El Niño." Physical Review Letters 100, no. 22 (06/05/ 2008): 228501.