HR: 0800h
AN: C51A-0109 [Abstracts]
TI: Ice Cores Dating With a New Inverse Method Taking Account of the Flow Modeling Errors
AU: * Lemieux-Dudon, B
EM: lemieux@lgge.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr
AF: Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Geophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS, 54 rue Moliere,
St Martin d'Heres, 38402, France
AU: Parrenin, F
EM: parrenin@lgge.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr
AF: Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Geophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS, 54 rue Moliere,
St Martin d'Heres, 38402, France
AU: Blayo, E
EM: Eric.Blayo@imag.fr
AF: Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann, 51 rue des Mathematiques, Grenoble, 38041, France
AB:
Deep ice cores extracted from Antarctica or Greenland recorded a wide range of past climatic events. In order to
contribute to the Quaternary climate system understanding, the calculation of an accurate depth-age relationship
is a crucial point. Up to now ice chronologies for deep ice cores estimated with inverse approaches are based on
quite simplified ice-flow models that fail to reproduce flow irregularities and consequently to respect all available
set of age markers. We describe in this paper, a new inverse method that takes into account the model
uncertainty in order to circumvent the restrictions linked to the use of simplified flow models. This method uses
first guesses on two flow physical entities, the ice thinning function and the accumulation rate and then identifies
correction functions on both flow entities. We highlight two major benefits brought by this new method: first of all
the ability to respect large set of observations and as a consequence, the feasibility to estimate a synchronized
common ice chronology for several cores at the same time. This inverse approach relies on a bayesian
framework. To respect the positive constraint on the searched correction functions, we assume lognormal
probability distribution on one hand for the background errors, but also for one particular set of the observation
errors. We test this new inversion method on three cores simultaneously (the two EPICA cores : DC and DML and
the Vostok core) and we assimilate more than 150 observations (e.g.: age markers, stratigraphic links,...). We
analyze the sensitivity of the solution with respect to the background information, especially the prior error
covariance matrix. The confidence intervals based on the posterior covariance matrix calculation, are estimated
on the correction functions and for the first time on the overall output chronologies.
DE: 0545 Modeling (4255)
DE: 0560 Numerical solutions (4255)
DE: 0724 Ice cores (4932)
DE: 0776 Glaciology (1621, 1827, 1863)
DE: 0798 Modeling
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting