Characterizing the Statistical Properties and Global Distribution of Dansgaard-Oeschger Events

• Main Author: Thomas, Andrea Michelle
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2009
• Subjects: Dansgaard-Oeschger events; D-O events; cyclicity; climate variability; bootstrap; permutation testing; correlation; Statistics and Probability; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; ice core
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2024; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/context/etd/article/3023/viewcontent/ETD_CISOPTR_2050.pdf

Ice core records from Greenland have shown times of rapid warming during the most recent glacial period, called Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events. D-O events are important to our understanding of both past climate systems and modern climate volatility. In this paper, we present new approaches for statistically evaluating the existence of cyclicity in D-O events and the possible lagged correlation between the Greenland and Antarctica temperature records. Specifically, we consider permutation testing and bootstrapping methodologies for assessing the cyclicity of D-O events and the correlation between the Greenland and Antarctica records. We find that there is not enough evidence to conclude that D-O events are cyclical; however, the Antarctica record leads the Greenland record by 545 years with a statistically significant correlation of 0.455.