A topological perspective on weather regimes

Abstract It has long been suggested that the mid-latitude atmospheric circulation possesses what come to be known as ‘weather regimes’, loosely categorised regions of phase space with above-average density and/or extended persistence. Their existence and behaviour extensively studied in meteorology climate science, due their potential for drastically simplifying complex chaotic dynamics. Several well-known, simple non-linear dynamical systems have used toy-models atmosphere order understand exemplify such regime behaviour. Nevertheless, no agreed-upon clear-cut definition a ‘regime’ exists literature, unambiguously detecting is stymied by high dimensionality system. We argue here an approach which equates regimes system non-trivial topological structure system’s attractor. show using persistent homology, algorithmic tool data analysis, this computationally tractable, practically informative, identifies relevant across range examples.