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The chaotic nature of ocean motion is a major challenge that hinders the discovery of spatio-temporal current routes that govern the transport of material. Certain material, such as oil spills, pose significant environmental threats and…
Consider a dynamical system given by a planar differential equation, which exhibits an unstable periodic orbit surrounding a stable periodic orbit. It is known that under random perturbations, the distribution of locations where the…
A class of models for large-scale evolution and mass extinctions is presented. These models incorporate environmental changes on all scales, from influences on a single species to global effects. This is a step towards a unified picture of…
If we assume that earthquakes are chaotic, and influenced locally then chaos theory suggests that there should be a temporal association between earthquakes in a local region that should be revealed with statistical examination. To date no…
Studying event time series is a powerful approach for analyzing the dynamics of complex dynamical systems in many fields of science. In this paper, we describe the method of event coincidence analysis to provide a framework for quantifying…
The Chirikov resonance-overlap criterion predicts the onset of global chaos if nonlinear resonances overlap in energy, which is conventionally assumed to require a non-small magnitude of perturbation. We show that, for a time-periodic…
Human settlements on Earth are scattered in a multitude of shapes, sizes and spatial arrangements. These patterns are often not random but a result of complex geographical, cultural, economic and historical processes that have profound…
Climate exhibits a vast range of dissipative structures. Some have characteristic times of a few days; others evolve on thousands of years. All these structures are interdependent; in other words, they communicate. It is often considered…
Numerical climate models are used to project future climate change due to both anthropogenic and natural causes. Differences between projections from different climate models are a major source of uncertainty about future climate. Emergent…
The number of objects in orbit is rapidly increasing, primarily driven by the launch of megaconstellations, an approach to satellite constellation design that involves large numbers of satellites paired with their rapid launch and disposal.…
On timescales that greatly exceed an orbital period, typical planetary orbits evolve in a stochastic yet stable fashion. On even longer timescales, however, planetary orbits can spontaneously transition from bounded to unbound chaotic…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
A model for large-scale evolution recently introduced by Amaral and Meyer is studied analytically and numerically. Species are located at different trophic levels and become extinct if their prey becomes extinct. It is proved that this…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
Do mass extinctions affect the development of intelligence? If so, we may expect to be in a universe that is exceptionally placid. We consider the effects of impacts, supervolcanoes, global glaciations, and nearby gamma ray bursts, and how…
A number of authors have in recent years proposed that the processes of macroevolution may give rise to self-organized critical phenomena which could have a significant effect on the dynamics of ecosystems. In particular it has been…
While observational cosmology has shown tremendous growth over the last decade, deep mysteries continue to haunt our theoretical understanding of the ingredients of the concordance cosmological model, which are mainly `dark'. More than 95…
A new modelling approach shows how the Earth's hidden vibrations may drive global weather dynamics and atmospheric pressure variations, hinting that the planet's own beat could be imprinted on our climate. The atmospheric rotational…
Critical transitions are observed in many complex systems. This includes the onset of synchronization in a network of coupled oscillators or the emergence an epidemic state within a population. "Explosive" first-order transitions have…
Are large biological extinctions such as the Cretaceous/Tertiary KT boundary due to a meteorite, extreme volcanic activity or self-organized critical extinction cascades? Are commercial successes due to a progressive reputation cascade or…