The Probabilistic Backbone of Data-Driven Complex Networks: An example in Climate

Correlation Networks (CNs) inherently suffer from redundant information in their network topology. Bayesian Networks (BNs), on the other hand, include only non-redundant information (from a probabilistic perspective) resulting in a sparse topology from which generalizable physical features can be extracted. We advocate the use of BNs to construct data-driven complex networks as they can be regarded as the probabilistic backbone of the underlying complex system. Results are illustrated at the hand of a global climate dataset.