Cascade and Intermittency of the Sea Surface Temperature in the Oceanic System

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the sea surface temperature obtained from the global drifter program. The experimental Fourier power spectrum shows a two-decade power-law behavior as $E_{\theta}(f)\propto f^{-7/3}$ in the frequency domain. Dimensional argument suggests a two-dimensional-like Lagrangian forward cascade, in which the enstrophy dissipation $\epsilon_{\Omega}$ is involved. Using the Hilbert-Huang transform and multi-level segment analysis, the measured high-order statistics and the corresponding singularity spectrum confirm the existence of the intermittency with a measured intermittency parameter $\mu_{\theta}\simeq0.10$, which is much weaker than the prediction by the conventional structure function method.