Lagrangian Documentation

The Finite Size Lyapunov Exponent (FSLE) is a local Lagrangian diagnostic widely used to study the transport and mixing of oceanographic tracers such as sea surface temperature and ocean color. It is derived from the Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent (FTLE), which helps identify Lagrangian Coherent Structures.

This code, developed in collaboration between LOCEAN (F. d’Ovidio) and CLS, is released under the GNU General Public License. Given a time series of mesoscale velocity fields, it computes sub-mesoscale maps of backward or forward FSLE/FTLE, as well as other diagnostics such as the orientation of Finite-Time Lyapunov Vectors.