Mathematics
Scientific paper
Aug 2004
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004e%26psl.224..529k&link_type=abstract
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 224, Issue 3-4, p. 529-545.
Mathematics
12
Stalagmite, Speleothem, Palaeo-Climate, Modelling, Nonlinear Inversion
Scientific paper
The growth of stalagmites is controlled by climatic conditions such as temperature, soil activity, and precipitation. Hence, a stalagmite stratigraphy reflects fluctuations of palaeo-climate conditions on various time scales, from annual variations to ice-age cycles. However, no attempt has been made to infer palaeo-climate fluctuations from the stratigraphy itself. We describe the complicated growth of a stalagmite with a simple mathematical model, in which both the growth rate and the equilibrium diameter of stalagmites are functions of palaeo-climate variables. Hence, inverting a given stalagmite stratigraphy in terms of growth rate and equilibrium diameter can in principle recover the palaeo-climate signal. The strongly nonlinear dependence of these two geometrical parameters, however, limits the success of a formal inversion of stratigraphical data. In this paper, we explore the resolving power of both growth rate and equilibrium diameter data for the palaeo-climate signals temperature, carbon-dioxide concentration, and precipitation. We use numerically generated stalagmite stratigraphies as observational data, thus we know beforehand the palaeo-climate signal contained in the stratigraphic record. Our results indicate that both variations in carbon-dioxide concentrations (as a proxy of soil cover) and drip interval (as a proxy of precipitation) can be recovered from the stratigraphy. However, temperature variations are poorly resolved.
Dreybrodt Wolfgang
Kaufmann Georg
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