Fractal analysis of sea level variations in coastal regions of India

Abstract

Sea level variations reflect the dynamics of the nonlinear atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere-lithosphere system. The nature of the nonlinearity can be deciphered from the analysis of the sea level records. Fractal analysis of the data recorded at the Indian tide gauge stations during the past several decades has been done using the Iterated Function Systems (IFS) technique. The calculated fractal dimensions vary between 1.2 and 1.3. This is slightly more than the values of the dimension of the sea level record over the duration of thousands of years. It is inferred that the long term behaviour of sea level changes can be modelled by a nonlinear dynamical system having a small number of variables.