Quantifying spatial heterogeneity of paleoceanographic proxies in marine sediments

Past oceanographic conditions can be reconstructed using long marine sediment cores spanning tens to millions of years. Such a reconstruction assumes that changes in the paleooceanographic proxies reflect climate and environmental changes at the study site, and sometimes of the region. This working assumption may be invalidated by processes such as lateral transport, bioturbation in sediments, or the change in the ecology of the source organism of proxy, introducing uncertainties (noise) to the reconstruction. One way to tease apart the noise from climate signal in proxy records is by analyzing multiple adjacent records. As the sites experience the same climate conditions, any differences in proxy records are likely caused by non-climate factors.