EVIDENCE OF CHAOTIC BEHAVIOR IN SINGAPORE RAINFALL

This paper focuses on the investigation of the existence of chaotic be havior in the Singapore rainfall data. The procedure for the determina tion of the minimum number of variables essential and the number of va riables sufficient to model the dynamics of the rainfall process was s tudied. An analysis of the rainfall behavior of different time periods was also conducted. The correlation dimension was used as a basis for discriminating stochastic and chaotic behaviors. Daily rainfall recor ds for durations of 30, 20, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 years from six stati ons were analyzed. The delay time for the phase-space reconstruction w as computed using the autocorrelation function approach. The results p rovide positive evidence of the existence of chaotic behavior in the d aily rainfall data. The minimum number of variables essential to model the dynamics of the rainfall process was identified to be 3 while the number of variables sufficient to model the dynamics of the rainfall process ranges from 11 to 18. The results also suggest that the attrac tor dimensions of rainfall data of longer time periods are higher than that of shorter time periods. The study suggests a minimum number of 1500 data points required for the computation of the correlation dimen sion of the rainfall data.