A Semi-Parametric Model for Assessing the Effect of Temperature on Ice Accumulation Rate From Antarctic Ice Core Data
Radhendushka Srivastava, Debasis Sengupta
Journal of the American Statistical Association · Mon
DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2026.2678606
Abstract
In this article, we present a semiparametric model for describing the effect of temperature on Antarctic ice accumulation on a paleoclimatic time scale. The model is motivated by sharp ups and downs in the rate of ice accumulation apparent from ice core data records, which are synchronous with movements of temperature. We prove consistency of the estimators under reasonable conditions. We conduct extensive simulations to assess the performance of the estimators and their bootstrap based standard errors and confidence limits for the requisite range of sample sizes. Analysis of ice core data from two Antarctic locations over several hundred thousand years shows a reasonable fit. The apparent accumulation rate exhibits a thinning pattern that should facilitate the understanding of ice condensation, transformation and flow over the ages. There is a very strong linear relationship between temperature and the apparent accumulation rate adjusted for thinning. Supplementary materials for this article are available online, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work.
Keywords
Consistency, Dependent errors, Kernel smoothing, Model based bootstrap, Nonlinear regression
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