NOBLEBOOK

NOBLEBOOK is a MICROSOFT EXCEL workbook designed to perform inverse modeling of dissolved noble gas concentrations in (ground)water

Developed by Werner Aeschbach-Hertig, Version 1.0, January 2004

This workbook is programmed according to the concepts and equations discussed in the following publications:

• Aeschbach-Hertig, W., F. Peeters, U. Beyerle, and R. Kipfer. 1999. Interpretation of dissolved atmospheric noble gases in natural waters. Water Resour. Res. 35:2779-2792.
   
• Aeschbach-Hertig, W., F. Peeters, U. Beyerle, and R. Kipfer. 2000. Palaeotemperature reconstruction from noble gases in ground water taking into account equilibration with entrapped air. Nature 405:1040-1044.

You are free to use this workbook, however, if you use it in your research, please cite at least one of the above mentioned papers.

This software is free and provided "as is", there is no warranty, express or implied, as to accuracy or completeness, and there is no obligation to provide the user with any support. The user assumes all risk for any damages whatsoever resulting from the use of this software.

This workbook provides a rather simple tool to perform inverse modeling of noble gas data. It uses the standard MICROSOFT-EXCEL add-in "Solver" to find the model parameter values that minimize the deviations between modeled and measured noble gas concentrations (expressed by chi square).

A much more sophisticated MATLAB program with additional functionality has been developed by Frank Peeters, follow this link to its download site.

Here you can obtain my updated manual for the current (Dec. 2003) version of the MATLAB program.

I have initially developed this workbook in 1997/98 to develop the idea of inverse data evaluation and to test and check the MATLAB routine that Frank Peeters developed in parallel. I have recently decided to brush it up a bit and make it available on the web, because some potential users of the method have no access to MATLAB and because it may make the ideas of the method more transparent than the MATLAB routine. However, it has important disadvantages, e.g.:

• no parameter uncertainties are calculated,
   
• no correlations between parameters are calculated,
   
• the use is rather clumsy, each sample is fitted on its own and each fit is started manually.

The following paper describes additional possibilities of using the inverse data evaluation approach, which are NOT included in this worksheet, but in the current version of the MATLAB routine:

• Peeters, F., U. Beyerle, W. Aeschbach-Hertig, J. Holocher, M. S. Brennwald, and R. Kipfer. 2002. Improving noble gas based paleoclimate reconstruction and groundwater dating using 20Ne/22Ne ratios. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 67:587-600.

Download NOBLEBOOK (200 k MS EXCEL Workbook).