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Community structure and dynamics in climate networks

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Abstract

We consider climate networks constructed from observed and model simulated fields of three climate variables and investigate their community structure. We find that for all fields the number of effective communities is rather small (four to five). We are able to trace the origin of these communities to certain dynamical properties of climate. Our results suggest that the complete complexity of the climate system condenses beyond the ‘weather’ time scales into a small number of low-dimensional interacting components and provide clues as to the nature of the climate subsystems underlying these components.

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Acknowledgments

Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis are funded by NSF grant AGS-0902564. Geli Wang is funded by NSFC 40890052. Luciano da F. Costa thanks CNPq (301303/06-1) and FAPESP (05/00587-5) for sponsorship. Francisco Aparecido Rodriges is grateful to FAPESP (07/50633-9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematical Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences Group, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53201, USA

    Anastasios A. Tsonis & Kyle L. Swanson

  2. LAGEO, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Geli Wang

  3. Institute of Physics at Sao Carlos, University of Sao Paulo, P.O. Box 369, Sao Carlos, SP, 13560-970, Brazil

    Francisco A. Rodrigues & Luciano da Fontura Costa

Authors
  1. Anastasios A. Tsonis
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  2. Geli Wang
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  3. Kyle L. Swanson
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  4. Francisco A. Rodrigues
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  5. Luciano da Fontura Costa
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Correspondence to Anastasios A. Tsonis.

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Tsonis, A.A., Wang, G., Swanson, K.L. et al. Community structure and dynamics in climate networks. Clim Dyn 37, 933–940 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0874-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0874-3

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