Assessing the impact of new observations on improved understanding of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Abstract
In paleoclimatology, collection of proxy data from field sites is a fundamental step to decipher the history of Earth's climate system. Field-site selection is based on a number of factors, including the availability of rock of the targeted age, whether the rocks are likely to contain proxy-containing materials little altered by diagenesis and weathering, and whether a particular region has been undersampled in the past. One factor that has only been qualitatively assessed is the impact that new proxy information from a particular field site will have on our understanding of the regional or global climate state. Here we present an ensemble-based Kalman filter (EnKF) method for the estimate of this observation impact factor. The methods are verified with a case study using TEX86 data, a biomarker proxy of sea surface temperature (SST) from 10 sites, and a 75-member ensemble from an Earth system model of intermediate complexity (cGENIE) for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ca. 56 Ma). A statistically significant relationship between impact factor and data-model misfit reduction, tested at these 10 sites, validates the impact factor results independently. This new approach may provide supporting justification for the selection of particular field sites for future observations in paleoclimate studies, e.g., associated with the Integrated Ocean and Continental Scientific Drilling Programs.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPP31E1680L
- Keywords:
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- 9604 Cenozoic;
- INFORMATION RELATED TO GEOLOGIC TIME;
- 4914 Continental climate records;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY;
- 4928 Global climate models;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY;
- 4954 Sea surface temperature;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY