Category:Uncertainty Working Group

Overview

In the LinkedEarth context, a working group (WG) is a self-organized coalition of knowledgeable experts, whose activities are governed herewith. This page is dedicated to the discussion of data and metadata standards for the uncertainty associated with ChronData and PaleoData.

Specific Task

We recommend that the discussions focus on the following considerations, and explore potential commonalities.

For each variable type, we recommend:

• structuring discussions about how uncertainty can affect the scientific questions one would want to ask of the data.
• Listing essential, recommended, and optional uncertainty information for:
  • The measurements themselves
  • The inferred climate information
• Providing an ideal template to report uncertainty in paleoclimate studies.
• Providing separate recommendations for new and legacy datasets
• Thinking about how the rest of the paleoscience community, or other (non)scientists may make use of the uncertainties you describe.

If you are aware of such standards for uncertainty applied in other fields, feel free to copy/paste or link here.

Rationale

The need to archive uncertainty associated with paleoclimate datasets was recognized at the workshop on representing and reducing uncertainties in high-resolution proxy climate data ^[1].

Representing uncertainties in databases: The World Data Center for Paleoclimatology hosted by NOAA has, through archiving paleoclimatic data and reconstructions, facilitate an explosion of paleoclimate-related research. The down side of this significant archive is that data can easily be obtained and analyzed without knowledge of the limitations and uncertainties contained within individual paleoclimate datasets. Such knowledge, at present, usually, resides with the contributing researcher and there is a need to archive within the database standard measures of proxy data uncertainty. Additional common databasing requirements identified were better metadata to accompany each dataset and archiving of original measurements from the different proxy archives. The latter allows for subsequent improvements in techniques for data standardization (e.g., dealing with growth trends in tree rings), chronological control, better instrumental data for calibration purposes, improved knowledge of climate controls. This is particularly critical for proxy records whose age models evolve through time (through high-resolution dating and/or radiometric re-calibrations performed after the initial publication of the record.

The group highlighted that:

Workshop participants agreed to the importance of improving the representation of uncertainties accompanying contributions in high-resolution paleoclimate data is to adapt the archival process to encourage the collection, quantification and documentation of proxy-specific uncertainties and associated metadata and enhance the availability of high-resolution proxy climate data to multi-proxy effort and model-data inter comparison studies.

Types of Uncertainty

The discussion was started in the Discussion page for marine sediments

Results of Twitter Poll: 3/15/17

Results of Twitter Poll: 3/16/17-3/22/17

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Cobb, K, Kiefer, T., Lough, J., Overpeck, J., Tudhope, S. 2008 Representing and reducing uncertainties in high-resolution proxy climate data. Report of a workshop sponsored by EPRI, NSF, NOAA, ICTP, PAGES/CLIVAR, June 9-11 2008, International Center for Theoretical Physics, Test Italy. http://www.clivar.org/sites/default/files/documents/TriesteReport_nov5.pdf