Application of Generalized Cauchy Process on Modeling the Long-Range Dependence and Self-Similarity of Sea Surface Chlorophyll Using 23 years of Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

Understanding the temporal characteristics of sea surface chlorophyll (SSC) is helpful for marine environmental management. This study chose 10 time series of remote daily sea surface chlorophyll products from the European Space Agency during the period from July 29, 1998 to December 31, 2020. A generalized Cauchy model was employed to capture the local and global behaviors of sea surface chlorophyll from a fractal perspective; the fractal dimension D measures the local similarity while the Hurst parameter H measures the global long-range dependence. The generalized Cauchy model was fitted to the empirical autocorrelation function values of each SSC series. The results showed that the sea surface chlorophyll was multi-fractal in both space and time with the D values ranging from 1.0000 to 1.7964 and H values ranging from 0.6757 to 0.8431. Specifically, regarding the local behavior, 9 of the 10 series had low D values (<1.5), representing weak self-similarity; on the other hand, regarding the global behavior, high H values represent strong long-range dependence that may be a general phenomenon of daily sea surface chlorophyll.