A Gyrostatic Low-Order Model for the El Ñino-Southern Oscillation

Abstract EN

The paper demonstrates that, similar to other important models of atmospheric phenomena, beginning with the celebrated Lorenz model of the Rayleigh-Bénard convection, the Vallis low-order model (LOM) of the El Ñino-Southern Oscillation admits a gyrostatic form and discusses how gyrostatic LOMs may offer a general framework for deriving effective physically sound models for atmospheric dynamics and time series analysis.

Any such model has a quadratic integral of motion (interpreted as some form of energy), which eliminates unphysical behaviors that have often plagued atmospheric LOMs and paves way for developing Hamiltonian LOMs.

Restricting LOMs to a gyrostatic form also helps to design LOMs of optimum size and provides a modular construction of LOMs using gyrostats as elementary building blocks.