New Statistical Analysis on Diatom Proxy Data for the Estimation of Past Southern Ocean Properties
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
New Statistical Analysis on Diatom Proxy Data for the Estimation of Past Southern Ocean Properties By Alexander John Ferry (BSc, Honours) A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde 2109, Australia 20 January 2016 This page is intentionally left blank. ii Statement of Sources Declaration Statement of Sources Declaration I declare that all of the work within this thesis is my own original work and has not been submitted in any other form for a higher degree to any other university or institution. Any additional help and contributions from my supervisors and co-authors has been indicated within the ‘Statement of co-authorship section’. No approval from the Macquarie University ethics committee was sought for any of the research presented within this thesis. Signature:……………………………………… Date:……………………………………… iii Statement of Co-authorship Statement of Co-authorship Chapter 1 I independently researched and produced the initial draft of sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.7 and 1.8. Feedback from my supervisors Dr Helen Phillips (University of Tasmania), Dr Tania Prvan (Macquarie University) and Dr Leanne Armand (Macquarie University) was integrated when finalising each of these sections. Sections 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 were also initially researched and written by myself. However, these latter sections were originally written as subsections within a book chapter co-authored by myself, Dr Leanne Armand and Prof Amy Leventer (Colgate University, U.S.A) (Armand, L.K., Ferry, A.J., and Leventer, A., (submitted). Chapter 26: Advances in palaeo sea ice estimation. In An Introduction to Sea Ice. 3rd Edition. Editor. Tomas, D. N. Wiley-Blackwell). Therefore, sections 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 of this thesis have received contributions from both Dr Leanne Armand and Prof Amy Leventer. In summary, I am responsible for producing 75% of this chapter. As this thesis has been prepared in accordance with the standards for a thesis by publication, each of the data chapters (Chapters 2 through to 5) have separate introductions outlining the scientific background to each Chapter. Hence, there is some redundancy between these chapters when compiled together as a thesis by publication. Chapter 2 I completed 90% of this chapter’s statistical analysis by myself. I also completed 100% of this chapters write up, with feedback from my co-supervisors Dr Tania Prvan, Dr Brian Jersky (Cal iv Statement of Co-authorship Poly Pomona, U.S.A), Dr Xavier Crosta (University of Bordeaux 1, France) and Dr Leanne Armand. I carried out 100% of the analysis for the hold out validation of each statistical model, application of statistical tests to assess model assumptions, computation of model performance statistics, species response modelling, and variance partitioning. Assistance from Dr David Nipperess (Macquarie University) was sought for the application of principal co-ordinate analysis of neighbour matrices. Dr David Nipperess also provided constructive feedback on a draft of this chapter, and assisted with reviewing my R scripts. Dr Drew Allen (Macquarie University) provided assistance with the use of the R packges ‘maps’ and ‘mapproj’ for the production of the maps presented within this Chapter. Dr Alex Fraser (University of Tasmania) provided extensive assistance with the extraction of winter sea-ice data from the bootstrapped sea-ice data product provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. I have presented this Chapter at two international conferences during 2012 and 2013. 1. PAGES sea-ice proxies working group meeting at Montreal, Canada, March 7-9. Oral presentation titled “New statistical analysis on diatom proxy data for the estimation of Past Southern Ocean sea ice extent”. 2. PAGES sea-ice proxies working group meeting at Cambridge, United Kingdom, July 22-24. Oral presentation titled “Estimating winter sea ice based on diatoms: Comparing statistical methods”. v Statement of Co-authorship Chapter 3 I produced 80% of this chapter by myself. My statistical contributions included the application of generalised additive models to estimate paleo winter sea-ice for marine sediment cores E27-23 and SO136-111, as well as the application of all reconstruction diagnostics. I was responsible for the write up of all sections of this chapter, with the exception of section 2.5, which was written by Dr Leanne Armand and Dr Xavier Crosta. Both Dr Armand and Dr Crosta carried out all of the analysis described in section 2.5. Assistance from Dr Rob Hyndman (Monash University) was sought for the application of the time series analysis using the ‘forecast’ package for R. I applied all of the time series analysis described in sections 2.2 and 3.1. Extensive feedback was received from my co-authors, Prof. Patrick Quilty (University if Tasmania), Dr William Howard (University of Melbourne), Dr. David Fink (ANSTO) and Dr Xavier Crosta during the write up of this chapter. Extensive feedback and advice from my principal supervisor, Dr Leanne Armand, was also integrated into this chapter. Chapter 4 I carried out all of the research and the initial write up of this chapter. I also completed all of the statistical analysis presented within this chapter. Feedback on early drafts of this chapter were provided by Dr Andrés Rigual-Hernández (Macquarie University) and my co-supervisors, Dr Tania Prvan and Dr Helen Phillips. My principal supervisor, Dr Leanne Armand, provided extensive feedback for the final write up of this chapter and established the age models for cores MD88-787 and MD88-784 using the “Linage” subroutine of Analyseries 2.0.8. Consequently, with the input from my supervisors and colleagues, I produced 90% of this chapter. vi Statement of Co-authorship Chapter 5 I wrote 95% of Chapter 5 and carried out all of the statistical analysis described, with the exception of section 2.1.3. The data analysis detailed in section 2.1.3, the extraction of the SSH contours, was carried out by my co-supervisor, Dr Helen Phillips. Dr Leanne Armand provided the Abbott diatom database used within this chapter, and clarified the diatom taxonomy used within this database. I applied all of the remaining analysis detailed in section 2.2 and section 3. The chapter was reviewed by my supervisors Dr Leanne Armand and Dr Helen Phillips, both of whom provided extensive feedback, which I integrated into this chapter. I therefore wrote 95% of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 Chapter 6 was written by myself, with feedback from my supervisors Dr Leanne Armand, Dr Helen Phillips and Dr Tania Prvan. Signature:……………………………………… Date:……………………………………… vii Acknowledgements Acknowledgments I want to send a very big thank you to my supervisors. In particular, I wish to send a special thanks to my principal supervisor, Dr Leanne Armand, for her guidance, encouragement and extreme patience as I progressed through my PhD. I am very grateful to my co-supervisors, Dr Helen Phillips and Dr Tania Prvan, for their encouragement and continued efforts to support my research. I am particularly grateful to Dr Tania Prvan and Dr Brian Jersky for offering support as I tackled many of the statistical hurdles I faced during the write up of this thesis. I also need to express my gratitude to Dr David Nipperes and Dr Drew Allen for their continued assistance with writing scripts for R. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Department of Science and Engineering’s ‘Genes to Geosciences’ program, and the R training I received whilst participating in this program. I thank the co-authors on many of my data chapters for their generous assistance and constructive input. In particular, I am grateful for the input I have received from Dr Xavier Crosta for both paleoceanographic and statistical discussions relevant to Chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis. Dr Xaiver Crosta was also kind enough to permit me access to his Southern Ocean diatom database, without which this thesis would not have been possible. I thank Dr Alex Fraser who donated a considerable amount of his time to assist me with the extraction of satellite sea-ice records throughout the Southern Ocean. The input from Prof Patrick Quilty, Dr William Howard and Dr David Fink on Chapter 3 of this thesis is gratefully acknowledged. I am grateful to Macquarie University for awarding me with an Australian post graduate award. My continued casual employment within the Departments of Biological Sciences, Environment and Geography, and Statistics over these last 3.5 years is gratefully acknowledged. I have gained viii Acknowledgements some extensive and valuable teaching experience which I hope to utilize in the future. I have also really appreciated the company and support of my fellow tutors and all of the unit convenors whom I have worked with. I have had a thoroughly enjoyable time teaching at Macquarie University. I am appreciative of the time I have been able to spend with my fellow ‘lab mates’, Dr Linda Armbrecht, Dr Penny Ajani and Dr Andrés Rigual-Hernández, all of whom have provided me with support and some fun times. Of course my good friends and dear family have been hugely supportive. Like most, I would not have accomplished all that I have up to this date without their love, support and wise words. ix Abstract Abstract The annual sea-ice cycle of formation and retreat influences atmospheric and oceanic processes on a global scale. An understanding of the paleo environmental occurrence of sea ice is therefore necessary when studying past and future climatic change. Currently, diatom abundances provide the most robust proxy for Southern Ocean paleo sea-ice cover and extent. Therefore, this thesis evaluated the performance of four statistical models on a southern hemisphere diatom relative abundance and winter sea-ice concentration (wSIC) training dataset.