New links between invariant dynamical structures and uncertainty quantification

This paper proposes a new uncertainty measure, appropriate for quantifying the performance of transport models in assessing the origin or source of a given observation. It is found that in a neighborhood of the observation the proposed uncertainty measure is related to the invariant dynamical structures of the model. The paper illustrates the implementation of the proposed definition to quantify the performance of ocean data sets in the context of a real oil spill event in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2021.