Water-level oscillations in the Adriatic Sea as coherent self-oscillations inferred by independent component analysis

Abstract

We analyze tide gauge records at four stations of the ISPRA network located in the Adriatic Sea basin (Eastern Italy), namely, going from North to South: Trieste, Ancona, Ortona and Otranto. We use linear and nonlinear methods in the frequency and time domains, including spectral and Independent Component Analysis (ICA), inter-times occurrence, and phase space embedding dimension evaluation. We show that four tidal constituents can be extracted by ICA and interpreted as coherent self-sustained oscillations. Finally, we show that these constituents can be reproduced by adopting a simple nonlinear oscillatory model that generalizes classical Andronov oscillator with the inclusion of a time dependent pumping.