Parameter Estimation of Partially Observed Turbulent Systems Using Conditional Gaussian Path-Wise Sampler

Parameter estimation of complex nonlinear turbulent dynamical systems using only partially observed time series is a challenging topic. The nonlinearity and partial observations often impede using closed analytic formulae to recover the model parameters. In this paper, an exact path-wise sampling method is developed, which is incorporated into a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm in light of data augmentation to efficiently estimate the parameters in a rich class of nonlinear and non-Gaussian turbulent systems using partial observations. This path-wise sampling method exploits closed analytic formulae to sample the trajectories of the unobserved variables, which avoid the numerical errors in the general sampling approaches and significantly increase the overall parameter estimation efficiency. The unknown parameters and the missing trajectories are estimated in an alternating fashion in an adaptive MCMC iteration algorithm with rapid convergence. It is shown based on the noisy Lorenz 63 model and a stochastically coupled FitzHugh–Nagumo model that the new algorithm is very skillful in estimating the parameters in highly nonlinear turbulent models. The model with the estimated parameters succeeds in recovering the nonlinear and non-Gaussian features of the truth, including capturing the intermittency and extreme events, in both test examples.