Straight to the source
Harvard scientists are using a powerful statistical tool to not only track sea level rise over time, but to determine where the water causing the rise is coming from. As described in an April 23 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), graduate students Eric Morrow and Carling Hay have demonstrated the use of a tool called a Kalman smoother to identify “sea level fingerprints” — telltale variations in sea level rise — in a synthetic data set. Using those fingerprints, scientists can determine where glacial melting is occurring. “The goal was to establish a rigorous and precise method for extracting those fingerprints from this very noisy signal,” Professor of Geophysics Jerry Mitrovica, who oversaw the research, said. “What Carling and Eric have come up with is very elegant, and it provides a powerful method for detecting the fingerprints. In my view everyone is soon going to be...