2019/12/01 by Athanasios Tsiairis, Pingyuan Wei, Tsiairis, Athanasios +5
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Chaotic Dynamics (nlin.CD) #Dynamical Systems (math.DS) #Ecosystem dynamics and resilience #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1912.00471
openalex publication_date 2019/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the impact of Brownian noise on transitions between metastable equilibrium states in a stochastic ice sheet model. Two methods to accomplish different objectives are employed. The maximal likely trajectory by maximizing the probability density function and numerically solving the Fokker-Planck equation shows how the system will evolve over time. We have especially studied the maximal likely trajectories starting near the ice-free metastable state, and examined whether they evolve to or near the ice-covered metastable state for certain parameters, in order to gain insights into how the ice sheet formed. Furthermore, for the transition from ice-covered metastable state to the ice-free metastable state, we study the most probable path for various noise parameters via the Onsager-Machlup least action principle. This enables us to predict and visualize the melting process of the ice sheet if such a rare event ever does take place.