Analysis of the Devil's Hole Temperature Data by Earth States

L. David Roper
http://www.roperld.com/personal/roperldavid.htm
6 April, 2016

Introduction

A 36-cm long core of vein calcite has been extracted from a cave in central Nevada, called Devil's Hole. Values of δ18O, a measure of the ratio of stable isotopes 18O:16O , in "per mil" (‰, parts per thousand), were measured in the core as a temperature proxy back 568,000 years ago.

The data are shown with the North-Pole-Summer Insolation:

Note the visual correlation with the insolation peaks, perhaps with some minor tuning at the earliest times. However, even after tuning, the numerical total correlation is not large, similar to the case for Antarctica ice-core measurements. For both the Devil's Hole and the Antarctica data, insolation serves as a trigger to turn on and off Earth states that affect the atmospheric temperature.

Earth-States Fits to the Devil's-Hole Data

The equation for the Earth-states transitions model used involves two hyperbolic-tangent functions subtracted one from the other. The equation is fitted to the Devil's-Hole data back to 450 ybp, similar to the time scale for the Antarctica data.

Here is the fit to the Devil's-Hole data with a single identical Earth-state transition for the last four Major Ice Ages:

Similar to the Antarctica case, a much better fit is obtained for two identical Earth states for the last four Major Ice Ages:

The parameters of the fit are:

Chi Sq.
a
b
t
s1
c11
w11
c12
w12
s2
c21
w21
c22
w22
8.9
14.0
0.0
-148.4
7.2
-58.4
41.7
22.0
10.9
8.5
17.2
12.9
-50.7
56.2
-259.0
7.2
-58.4
41.7
22.0
10.9
8.5
17.2
12.9
-50.7
56.2
-348.2
7.2
-58.4
41.7
22.0
10.9
8.5
17.2
12.9
-50.7
56.2
-425.8
7.2
-58.4
41.7
22.0
10.9
8.5
17.2
12.9
-50.7
56.2

The fit is greatly improved if the parameters of the two states are allowed to be different for the four Major Ice Ages:

The two earth-states transitions and the four Major-Ice-Ages components for both are:

It is interesting that a Major Ice Age's transition begins before the previous Major Ice Age's transition ends.

The parameters of the fit are:

Chi Sq.
C
F
t
s1
c11
w11
c12
w12
s2
c21
w21
c22
w22
4.2
10.9
0.0
-132.2
9.6
-68.2
100.6
9.0
10.8
12.4
4.9
16.7
-0.2
141.7
-250.9
17.4
-62.0
33.5
16.7
14.8
25.6
14.3
20.5
-32.6
77.1
-344.4
14.6
-53.7
41.7
14.1
19.9
12.1
6.7
13.8
-32.7
54.4
-419.6
6.7
-68.0
34.4
20.9
10.0
6.2
18.5
13.7
-35.1
63.3

The Earth states could be turning on and off of thermohaline ocean currents, releasing and absorbing of carbon, etc.

Global-Heating articles and Major-Ice-Age articles by L. David Roper
L. David Roper interdisciplinary studies