ESTIMATING 2ND-ORDER PARAMETERS OF VOLCANICITY FROM HISTORICAL DATA

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: GUTTORP, P; THOMPSON, ML
• 署名单位: University of Cape Town
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0162-1459
• DOI: 10.2307/2290385
• 发表日期: 1991
• 页码: 578-583
• 关键词: point process analysis; eruptions

摘要

To study patterns of volcanicity it is important to use historical data. These data are, however, frequently incomplete. We develop a nonparametric procedure for estimating second-order parameters of the point process of eruption starts from a catalog. This method requires an assumption of underlying stationarity, of smoothness of the probability of recording an eruption as a function of time, and of independence of this probability from the history of the process. We illustrate the procedure on the Smithsonian catalog of worldwide volcanic eruptions. We also look separately at data from Japan and Iceland. The global and the Japanese data sets show little structure, but the Icelandic data exhibits a tendency toward periodic behavior, with a period of about 40 years. We do not see any regularity corresponding to certain long tidal cycles, as has previously been suggested in the literature.