Complex coastal oceanographic fields can be described by universal multifractals

Characterization of chlorophyll and sea surface temperature (SST) structural heterogeneity using their scaling properties can provide a useful tool to estimate the relative importance of key physical and biological drivers. Seasonal, annual, and also instantaneous spatial distributions of chlorophyll and SST, determined from satellite measurements, in seven different coastal and shelf-sea regions around the UK have been studied. It is shown that multifractals provide a very good approximation to the scaling properties of the data: in fact, the multifractal scaling function is well approximated by universal multifractal theory. The consequence is that all of the statistical information about data structure can be reduced to being described by two parameters. It is further shown that also bathymetry scales in the studied regions as multifractal. The SST and chlorophyll multifractal structures are then explained as an effect of bathymetry and turbulence.