Spectral estimation for geophysical time‐series with inconvenient gaps

SUMMARY The power of spectral estimation as a tool for studying geophysical processes is often limited by short records or breaks in available time‐series. Direct spectral estimation using multitaper techniques designed to reduce variance and minimize leakage can help alleviate the first problem. For records with gaps, systematic interpolation or averaging of multitaper spectra derived from record fragments may prove adequate in some cases, but can be cumbersome to implement. Alternatively, multitapers can be modified for use in direct spectral estimation with intermittently sampled data. However, their performance has not been adequately studied. We investigate reliability and resolution of techniques that adapt prolate and minimum bias (MB) multitapers to accommodate the longest breaks in sampling, comparing the tapering functions (referred to as PRG or MBG tapers) with the standard prolate and MB tapers used for complete data series, and with the section‐averaging approach. Using a synthetic data set, we test both jackknife and bootstrap methods to calculate confidence intervals for PRG and MBG multitaper spectral estimates and find the jackknife is both more accurate and faster to compute. To implement these techniques for a variety of data sets, we provide an algorithm that allows the user to balance judicious interpolation against the use of suitably adapted tapers, providing empirical measures of both bias and frequency resolution for candidate sets of tapers. These techniques are tested on diverse geophysical data sets: a record of change in the length of day, a model of the external dipole part of the geomagnetic field produced by the magnetospheric ring current, and a 12 Myr long irregularly sampled relative geomagnetic palaeointensity record with pernicious gaps. We conclude that both PRG and MBG tapers generally perform as well as, or better than, an optimized form of the commonly used section averaging approach. The greatest improvements seem to occur when the gap structure creates data segments of very unequal lengths. Ease of computation and more robust behaviour can make MBG tapers a better choice than PRG except when very fine‐scale frequency resolution is required. These techniques could readily be applied for cross‐spectral and transfer function estimation and are a useful addition to the geophysical toolbox.