The Shortcomings of Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis in Identifying Circulation Regimes
Open Access
- 15 November 2005
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of Climate
- Vol. 18 (22) , 4814-4823
- https://doi.org/10.1175/jcli3569.1
Abstract
Recent studies of regime behavior in the extratropical variability have been based on a nonlinear extension to principal component analysis. Multimodality has been identified in the nonlinear principal component, and the multimodality has been interpreted as evidence for the existence of multiple circulation regimes. Here, multimodality is shown to be abundant in nonlinear principal component analysis when applied to sufficiently isotropic data even if these data are inherently unimodal. It is recommended that the nonlinear principal component analysis should not be used for detection of multimodality and regime behavior.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
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