How do chaos and turbulence affect the predictability of natural complex fluid flow systems?

Abstract

Natural complex fluid flow systems exhibit turbulent and chaotic behavior that determines their high-level complexity. Chaos has an accurate mathematical definition, while turbulence is a property of fluid flow without an accurate mathematical definition. Using the Kolmogorov complexity (KC) and its derivatives (KC spectrum and its highest value), permutation entropy (PE), and Lyapunov exponent (LE), we considered how chaos and turbulence affect the predictability of natural complex fluid flow systems. This paper applied KC, Kolmogorov complexity spectrum, PE, and LE measures to investigate the turbulent and chaotic behaviors of the monthly streamflow of rivers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States, and the Mendoza Basin (Argentina) and evaluated their time horizons using the Lyapunov time (LT). Based on the measures applied for river streamflow, we derived four modes of the interrelationship between turbulence and chaos. Finally, using those modes, we clustered rivers with similar time horizons representing their predictability. In summary, the calculated quantities of the measures were in the following intervals: (i) KC (0.484, 0.992), (ii) PE (0.632, 0.866), (iii) LE (0.108, 0.278), and (iv) LT (3.4, 9.3 months).