An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:258

Article

De Cort, Gijs^1,2,3  Chevalier, Manuel^4,5  Burrough, Sallie L.⁶  Chen, Christine Y.^7,8,9,11  Harrison, Sandy P.¹⁰ 

[1] Univ Ghent, Dept Biol, Limnol Unit, KL Ledeganckstr 35, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium

[2] Columbia Univ, Lamont Doherty Earth Observ, Div Ocean & Climate Phys, Palisades, NY USA

[3] Royal Museum Cent Africa, Dept Earth Sci, Tervuren, Belgium

[4] Univ Lausanne, Inst Earth Surface Dynam, Lausanne, Switzerland

[5] Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Univ Bonn, Inst Geosci, Sect Meteorol, Bonn, Germany

[6] Univ Oxford, Sch Geog & Environm, Oxford, England

[7] Massachusetts Inst Technol Woods Hole Oceanog Ins, Cambridge, MA USA

[8] MIT, Dept Earth Atmospher & Planetary Sci, Cambridge, MA USA

[9] CALTECH, Div Geol & Planetary Sci, Pasadena, CA 91125 USA

[10] Univ Reading, Sch Archaeol Geog & Environm Sci, Reading, Berks, England

[11] Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab, Div Nucl & Chem Sci, Livermore, CA USA

关键词: Lake status;    Lake level;    Palaeolimnology;    Palaeoclimatology;    Relational database;    Data uncertainty;    Monte Carlo algorithm;    Recursively-subtracted empirical orthogonal function;    Africa;    Quaternary;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Changes in lake status are often interpreted as palaeoclimate indicators due to their dependence on precipitation and evaporation. The Global Lake Status Database (GLSDB) has since long provided a standardised synopsis of qualitative lake status over the last 30,000 C-14 years. Potential sources of uncertainty however are not recorded in the GLSDB. Here we present an updated and improved relational database framework that incorporates uncertainty in both chronology and the interpretation of palaeoenvironmental data. The database uses peer-reviewed palaeolimnological studies to produce a consensus on qualitative lake-status histories, whose chronologies are revised and standardized through the recalibration of radiocarbon dates and the application of Bayesian age-depth modelling for strati graphic archives. Quantitative information on absolute water-level elevation is preserved if available from geomorphological sources. We also propose a new probabilistic analytical framework that accounts for these uncertainties to reconstruct synoptic, integrated environmental signals. The process is based on a Monte Carlo algorithm that iteratively samples individual lake-status histories within the limits of their uncertainties to produce many possible scenarios. We then use Recursively-Subtracted Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis to extract dominant patterns of lake-status variability from these scenarios. As a proof of concept, we apply this framework to 67 sites in eastern and southern Africa whose lake status histories cover part of the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. We show that, despite the sometimes large temporal and interpretation uncertainties, and the inclusion of highly discontinuous lake-status time series, identifying the major known millennial-scale climatic phases during the last 20,000 years is possible. Our framework was also able to identify an antiphased response between the lake basins in eastern and interior southern Africa to these changes. We propose that our new database and methodology framework serves as a template for efficient lake-status data synthesis, encourages the incorporation of lake-status data in palaeoclimate syntheses, and expands the possibilities for the use of such data in the evaluation of climate models. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free