FY 1991

Flow trajectories in the Bering Sea: Evidence for chaos

Reed, R.K., and P.J. Stabeno

Geophys. Res. Lett., 17(12), 2141–2144, doi: 10.1029/GL017i012p02141 (1990)

A set of trajectories from drifting buoys in the Bering Sea is analyzed for evidence of chaos. The separation distance between drifters was found, in most cases, to have regions of exponential increase, which strongly suggests Lagrangian chaos. Analysis of the Kolmogorov entropy indicated a fractal dimension of 1.2 and a time scale of (22 d)⁻¹.