Objective Eulerian coherent structures.

We define objective Eulerian Coherent Structures (OECSs) in two-dimensional, non-autonomous dynamical systems as the instantaneously most influential material curves. Specifically, OECSs are stationary curves of the averaged instantaneous material stretching-rate or material shearing-rate functionals. From these objective (frame-invariant) variational principles, we obtain explicit differential equations for hyperbolic, elliptic, and parabolic OECSs. As an illustration, we compute OECSs in an unsteady ocean velocity data set. In comparison to structures suggested by other common Eulerian diagnostic tools, we find OECSs to be the correct short-term cores of observed trajectory deformation patterns.