Carson, J., Crucifix, M., Preston, S. et al. (1 more author) (2019) Quantifying age and model uncertainties in palaeoclimate data and dynamical climate models with a joint inferential analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and physical sciences, 475 (2224). 20180854. ISSN 1364-503X
Abstract
The study of palaeoclimates relies on information sampled in natural archives such as deep sea cores. Scientific investigations often use such information in multi-stage analyses, typically with an age model being fitted to a core to convert depths into ages at stage one. These age estimates are then used as inputs to develop, calibrate or select climate models in a second stage of analysis. Here, we show that such multi-stage approaches can lead to misleading conclusions, and develop a joint inferential approach for climate reconstruction, model calibration and age estimation. As an illustration, we investigate the glacial–interglacial cycle, fitting both an age model and dynamical climate model to two benthic sediment cores spanning the past 780 kyr. To show the danger of a multi-stage analysis, we sample ages from the posterior distribution, then perform model selection conditional on the sampled age estimates, mimicking standard practice. Doing so repeatedly for different samples leads to model selection conclusions that are substantially different from each other, and from the joint inferential analysis. We conclude that multi-stage analyses are insufficient when dealing with uncertainty, and that to draw sound conclusions the full joint inferential analysis should be performed.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Royal Society. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | climate reconstruction; glacial–interglacial cycle; model calibration; model selection; palaeoclimate; uncertainty quantification |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Mar 2019 11:24 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2020 14:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rspa.2018.0854 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:143482 |