Reduced rank filtering in chaotic systems with application in geophysical sciences

Recent technological advancements have enabled us to collect large volumes of geophysical noisy measurements that need to be combined with the model forecasts, which capture all of the known properties of the underlying system. This problem is best formulated in a stochastic optimization framework, which when solved recursively is known as Filtering. Due to the large dimensions of geophysical models, optimal filtering algorithms cannot be implemented within the constraints of available computation resources. As a result, most applications use suboptimal reduced rank algorithms. Successful implementation of reduced rank filters depends on the dynamical properties of the underlying system. Here, the focus is on geophysical systems with chaotic behavior defined as extreme sensitivity of the dynamics to perturbations in the state or parameters of the system. In particular, uncertainties in a chaotic system experience growth and instability along a particular set of directions in the state space that are continually subject to large and abrupt state-dependent changes. Therefore, any successful reduced rank filter has to continually identify the important direction of uncertainty in order to properly estimate the true state of the system. In this thesis, we introduce two efficient reduced rank filtering algorithms for chaotic system, scalable to large geophysical applications. Firstly, a geometric approach is taken to identify the growing directions of uncertainty, which translate to the leading singular vectors of the state transition matrix over the forecast period, so long as the linear approximation of the dynamics is valid.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Ahanin, Adel, 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dara Entekhabi and Dennis McLaughlin.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54878

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54878