| Session Details | |
| Section | IWG - Interdisciplinary Working Groups |
| Session Title | Critical Phenomena in the Earth’s System Processes: Applications of Fractal, Chaos and Catastrophe Theory |
| Main Convener | Dr. Ram Krishna Tiwari (NGRI, India) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Saumen Maiti (IIG, India) |
| Session Description | Earth system processes combine earth, ocean and atmospheric phenomena. Many earth processes are non-linear in nature and exhibit abrupt/critical behavior. For instance, occurrences of frequent earthquakes (reservoir induced seismicity), various aspects of climate variability, ocean circulations and ice sheet dynamics, turbulence in the atmosphere and geomagnetic storms, bio-diversity and evolution, mass extinction, volcanism , processes of earth’s interior and phase changes in mantle dynamics, land slide etc exhibit a catastrophic `jump’ leading to complexity and self organization . Understanding the behavior of these critical phenomena is essential for formulating the global physical mechanism for the underlying processes. Developing and/or implementing new techniques to understand the nature of these physical processes and their interactions with other exogenic and endogenic phenomena are, therefore, essential for making prediction or at least understanding the qualitative nature of their sensitive critical physical behavior. This requires appropriate theoretical considerations and analysis /modeling of available data. Linear and non-linear numerical and theoretical modeling of these critical processes has been extensively carried out during the past several years. Results have shown that small changes in certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or disappear, or to change from attracting to repelling and vice versa, leading to large and sudden changes of the behavior of the system. Understanding the apparent unpredictability of the onset and termination of catastrophic phenomena is possible by studying the `critical point’ behavior of the system dynamics. Several difficulties have been encountered: First for instance, developing analytical models and solving them analytically does not provide expected results. Numerical-based techniques have been developed to overcome this problem. However, even after detailed numerical calculation over a range of parametric values, it is not possible to make general statements about the effect of varying parameters. Consequently, presentation of results in a coherent way becomes difficult. This is due to the fact that characteristic jumps in the amplitude of the system dynamics occur due to changes in combination of controlling parameters and not just due to change in a single parameter. Analysis and their appropriate interpretation, combined with proper understanding of theoretical models, would render significant insight and shed light on the evolution of these processes. We propose to organize a session on the above topic where we can discuss the above issues and applications of these modern methods in various geo-bio-ocean-atmospheric phenomena. These ideas are of utmost importance in the advancement of the present traditional scientific works and will provide an appropriate forum to discuss and understand these critical phenomena. The session will include theory, concepts and modern tool and techniques to understand the problem of large scale spatio-temporal variability in earth system processes ranging from the domains of earth’s interior processes to atmospheric and planetary systems. |