Dynamics of model error: The role of the boundary conditions

The different modes of the early stages of the response of a forecasting model to a small error in the boundary conditions are analyzed. A general formulation of the problem based on the use of Green's functions is developed and implemented on systems in which the operators acting on the spatial coordinates of the fields involved are diffusion-like and advection-like. It is shown that the generic behavior displays a nonanalytic structure not reducible to a power of time for short times.