Predicting Future Climate Using Algae Sedimentation

Abstract

Biologists have shown that algae are the first to be implicated in climate changes and vice versa. The goal of this research effort is to predict the future climate using algae species living in a lake in the past. On performing age depth profile analysis on the sediment core obtained from the bottom of Jewel Lake in Alaska, a dataset of 163 records is derived. The 163 records collectively represent 4,308 years interval. Each record is composed of 86 attributes: Year, 84 species of algae, and Climate. The relevancy analysis of the attributes of the dataset identified only four species relevant to climate. An extrapolation system's Architecture with two stages of prediction process fit to meet the goal of this research effort. Three different predictive models of regression analysis, neural network, and ID3 were investigated for possible use in development of the extrapolation system resulting in four possible ways among which the best one uses neural networks in both stages. The best extrapolation system was able to predict climate for a year in future, within the next 278 years, with the average accuracy of 80%.