Santa Ana Winds: Multifractal Measures and Singularity Spectrum

Abstract

A multifractal analysis based on the time series of temperature, pressure, relative humidity, wind speed, and wind direction was performed for 16 weather stations located in the hydrographic basin of the Guadalupe River in Baja California, Mexico. Our analysis included a 38-year dataset from MERRA-2 database, we investigated the multifractal nature of daily time series data for climatic variables associated with the Santa Ana Winds. We employed the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) method to extract multifractal complexity parameters (α0, ∆α, and r). This was adequate to evaluate the multifractality of the time series that represented the conditions of the phenomenon’s occurrence. From the estimation of the generalized Hurst exponent (hq), it was possible to characterize the time series of the meteorological variables in terms of the characteristics of persistence, anti-persistence, or randomness. Finally, the values corresponding to the parameters and characteristics of the multifractal spectrum or singularities can be used as quantitative and qualitative indicators to describe the dynamics of meteorological processes during the occurrence of the Santa Ana winds in the Guadalupe basin.