Nonsmooth Homoclinic Bifurcation in a Conceptual Climate Model

Abstract

Collision of equilibria with a splitting manifold has been locally studied, but might also be a contributing factor to global bifurcations. In particular a boundary collision can be coincident with collision of a virtual equilibrium with a periodic orbit, giving an analogue to a homoclinic bifurcation. This type of bifurcation is demonstrated in a nonsmooth climate application. Here we describe the nonsmooth bifurcation structure, as well as the smooth bifurcation structure for which the nonsmooth homoclinic bifurcation is a limiting case.