Issues with the application of empirical mode decomposition analysis

Abstract

Hydroclimatic variability occurs over time scales ranging from seconds through to millennia. Fluctuations at certain time scales, like monthly, seasonal, annual, interannual and interdecadal, are particularly important for the sustainable management of land and water resources systems. Quantifying the proportion of variation in a hydroclimatic time series due to fluctuations at different time scales is usually done using spectral techniques, like Fourier analysis, which assume a time series to be both linear and stationary. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), a relatively new form of time series analysis for quantifying the proportion of variation at different time scales, is introduced and ..