Yongku Kim

Bayesian Design and Analysis for Superensemble-Based Climate Forecasting

Abstract The authors develop statistical data models to combine ensembles from multiple climate models in a fashion that accounts for uncertainty. This formulation enables treatment of model specific means, biases, and covariance matrices of the ensembles. In addition, the authors model the uncertainty in using computer model results to estimate true states of nature. Based on these models and principles of decision making in the presence of uncertainty, this paper poses the problem of superensemble experimental design in a quantitative fashion. Simple examples of the resulting optimal designs are presented. The authors also provide a Bayesian climate modeling and forecasting analysis. The climate variables of interest are Northern and Southern Hemispheric monthly averaged surface temperatures. A Bayesian hierarchical model for these quantities is constructed, including time-varying parameters that are modeled as random variables with distributions depending in part on atmospheric CO2 levels. This allows ...

Modeling dynamic controls on ice streams: a Bayesian statistical approach

Our main goal is to exemplify the study of ice-stream dynamics via Bayesian statistical analysis incorporating physical, though imperfectly known, models using data that are both incomplete and noisy. The physical-statistical models we propose account for these uncertainties in a coherent, hierarchical manner. The initial modeling assumption estimates basal shear stress as equal to driving stress, but subsequently includes a random corrector process to account for model error. The resulting stochastic equation is incorporated into a simple model for surface velocities. Use of Bayes theorem allows us to make inferences on all unknowns given basal elevation, surface elevation and surface velocity. The result is a posterior distribution of possible values that can be summarized in a number of ways. For example, the posterior mean of the stress field indicates average behavior at any location in the field, and the posterior standard deviations describe associated uncertainties. We analyze data from the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream and illustrate how scientific conclusions may be drawn from our Bayesian analysis.

Equilibrium dynamics of ice streams: A Bayesian statistical analysis

Studies of the behaviors of glaciers, ice sheets, and ice streams rely heavily on both observations and physical models. Data acquired via remote sensing provide critical information on geometry and movement of ice over large sections of Antarctica and Greenland. However, uncertainties are present in both the observations and the models. Hence, there is a need for combining these information sources in a fashion that incorporates uncertainty and quantifies its impact on conclusions. We present a hierarchical Bayesian approach to modeling ice-stream velocities incorporating physical models and observations regarding velocity, ice thickness, and surface elevation from the North East Ice Stream in Greenland. The Bayesian model leads to interesting issues in model assessment and computation.

Bayesian variable selection under the proportional hazards mixed-effects model

Over the past decade much statistical research has been carried out to develop models for correlated survival data; however, methods for model selection are still very limited. A stochastic search variable selection (SSVS) approach under the proportional hazards mixed-effects model (PHMM) is developed. The SSVS method has previously been applied to linear and generalized linear mixed models, and to the proportional hazards model with high dimensional data. Because the method has mainly been developed for hierarchical normal mixture distributions, it operates on the linear predictor under the Cox type models. The PHMM naturally incorporates the normal distribution via the random effects, which enables SSVS to efficiently search through the candidate variable space. The approach was evaluated through simulation, and applied to a multi-center lung cancer clinical trial data set, for which the variable selection problem was previously debated upon in the literature.

Temporal Statistical Downscaling of Precipitation and Temperature Forecasts Using a Stochastic Weather Generator

Statistical downscaling is based on the fact that the large-scale climatic state and regional/local physiographic features control the regional climate. In the present paper, a stochastic weather generator is applied to seasonal precipitation and temperature forecasts produced by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). In conjunction with the GLM (generalized linear modeling) weather generator, a resampling scheme is used to translate the uncertainty in the seasonal forecasts (the IRI format only specifies probabilities for three categories: below normal, near normal, and above normal) into the corresponding uncertainty for the daily weather statistics. The method is able to generate potentially useful shifts in the probability distributions of seasonally aggregated precipitation and minimum and maximum temperature, as well as more meaningful daily weather statistics for crop yields, such as the number of dry days and the amount of precipitation on wet days. The approach is extended to the case of climate change scenarios, treating a hypothetical return to a previously observed drier regime in the Pampas.

Hierarchical Bayesian Approach to a Multi-Site Hidden Markov Model

Multivariate data with a sequential or temporal structure occur in various fields of study. The hidden Markov model (HMM) provides an attractive framework for modeling long-term persistence in areas of pattern recognition through the extension of independent and identically distributed mixture models. Unlike in typical mixture models, the heterogeneity of data is represented by hidden Markov states. This article extends the HMM to a multi-site or multivariate case by taking a hierarchical Bayesian approach. This extension has many advantages over a single-site HMM. For example, it can provide more information for identifying the structure of the HMM than a single-site analysis. We evaluate the proposed approach by exploiting a spatial correlation that depends on the distance between sites.

An Analysis of Record Statistics based on an Exponentiated Gumbel Model

This paper develops a maximum profile likelihood estimator of unknown parameters of the exponentiated Gumbel distribution based on upper record values. We propose an approximate maximum profile likelihood estimator for a scale parameter. In addition, we derive Bayes estimators of unknown parameters of the exponentiated Gumbel distribution using Lindley’s approximation under symmetric and asymmetric loss functions. We assess the validity of the proposed method by using real data and compare these estimators based on estimated risk through a Monte Carlo simulation.

Estimation on the Generalized Half Logistic Distribution under Type-II Hybrid Censoring

In this paper, we derive maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) and approximate maximum likelihood estimators (AMLEs) of unknown parameters in a generalized half logistic distribution under Type-II hybrid censoring. We also obtain approximate confidence intervals using asymptotic variance and covariance matrices based on the MLEs and the AMLEs. As an illustration, we examine the validity of the proposed estimation using real data. Finally, we compare the proposed estimators in the sense of the mean squared error (MSE), bias, and length of the approximate confidence interval through a Monte Carlo simulation for various censoring schemes.

Bayesian Estimations on the Exponentiated Distribution Family with Type-II Right Censoring

Exponentiated distribution has been used in reliability and survival analysis especially when the data is censored. In this paper, we derive Bayesian estimation of the shape parameter, reliability function and failure rate function in the exponentiated distribution family based on Type-II right censored data. We here consider conjugate prior and noninformative prior and corresponding posterior distributions are obtained. As an illustration, the mean square errors of the estimates are computed. Comparisons are made between these estimators using Monte Carlo simulation study.

Bayesian Estimators Using Record Statistics of Exponentiated Inverse Weibull Distribution

The inverse Weibull distribution(IWD) is a complementary Weibull distribution and plays an important role in many application areas. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian estimator in the context of record statistics values from the exponentiated inverse Weibull distribution(EIWD). We obtained Bayesian estimators through the squared error loss function (quadratic loss) and LINEX loss function. This is done with respect to the conjugate priors for shape and scale parameters. The results may be of interest especially when only record values are stored.