Consider I have in situ measurements (samples) of 4 variables: Temperature, salinity, pH, depth
I know how temperature will change and want to calculate the expected change in my other variables salinity and pH. Depth is fixed for each sample and cannot change. The variables are correlated to each other.
I can do a linear regression for both variables:
E[Salinity_sample] ~ b1*Temp_sample+b2*pH_sample+b3*depth_sample+intercept_salinity
E[pH_sample] ~ c1*Salinity_sample + c2*Temp_sample+ c3*depth_sample+intercept_pH
I know my change in temperature for each sample so Temp_future-Temp_sample is known here as Delta_Temp
now I would naively estimate my expected change in salinity for each sample as :
salinity_future ~ Salinity_sample + b1*Delta_Temp
pH_future ~ pH_sample + c2*Delta_Temp
but this ignores that pH and salinity are correlated with each other and temperature. Do my intercepts (Salinity_sample,pH_sample) account for that correlation already? if this calculation is wrong, how should I incorporate salinity and pH in the above calculations. Are there other ways maybe statistically more elaborated to get salinity_future and pH_future values in accordance to my Delta_Temp?
So do I not need to rather do
salinity_future ~ Salinity_sample + b1*Delta_Temp + b2*(pH_future-pH_sample)
but pH_future is also something I have to estimate from salinity_future so this is somehow a vicious circle of confusion.