Spatial analysis of tails of air pollution PDFs in Europe

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: He, Hankun, Schäfer, Benjamin, Beck, Christian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author He, Hankun
Schäfer, Benjamin
Beck, Christian
author_facet He, Hankun
Schäfer, Benjamin
Beck, Christian
contents Outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause a huge number of premature deaths worldwide, it catalyses many diseases on a variety of time scales, and it has a detrimental effect on the environment. In light of these impacts it is necessary to obtain a better understanding of the dynamics and statistics of measured air pollution concentrations, including temporal fluctuations of observed concentrations and spatial heterogeneities. Here we present an extensive analysis for measured data from Europe. The observed probability density functions (PDFs) of air pollution concentrations depend very much on the spatial location and on the pollutant substance. We analyse a large number of time series data from 3544 different European monitoring sites and show that the PDFs of nitric oxide ($NO$), nitrogen dioxide ($NO_{2}$) and particulate matter ($PM_{10}$ and $PM_{2.5}$) concentrations generically exhibit heavy tails. These are asymptotically well approximated by $q$-exponential distributions with a given entropic index $q$ and width parameter $λ$. We observe that the power-law parameter $q$ and the width parameter $λ$ vary widely for the different spatial locations. We present the results of our data analysis in the form of a map that shows which parameters $q$ and $λ$ are most relevant in a given region. A variety of interesting spatial patterns is observed that correlate to properties of the geographical region. We also present results on typical time scales associated with the dynamical behaviour.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_18268
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatial analysis of tails of air pollution PDFs in Europe
He, Hankun
Schäfer, Benjamin
Beck, Christian
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Dynamical Systems
Applications
Outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause a huge number of premature deaths worldwide, it catalyses many diseases on a variety of time scales, and it has a detrimental effect on the environment. In light of these impacts it is necessary to obtain a better understanding of the dynamics and statistics of measured air pollution concentrations, including temporal fluctuations of observed concentrations and spatial heterogeneities. Here we present an extensive analysis for measured data from Europe. The observed probability density functions (PDFs) of air pollution concentrations depend very much on the spatial location and on the pollutant substance. We analyse a large number of time series data from 3544 different European monitoring sites and show that the PDFs of nitric oxide ($NO$), nitrogen dioxide ($NO_{2}$) and particulate matter ($PM_{10}$ and $PM_{2.5}$) concentrations generically exhibit heavy tails. These are asymptotically well approximated by $q$-exponential distributions with a given entropic index $q$ and width parameter $λ$. We observe that the power-law parameter $q$ and the width parameter $λ$ vary widely for the different spatial locations. We present the results of our data analysis in the form of a map that shows which parameters $q$ and $λ$ are most relevant in a given region. A variety of interesting spatial patterns is observed that correlate to properties of the geographical region. We also present results on typical time scales associated with the dynamical behaviour.
title Spatial analysis of tails of air pollution PDFs in Europe
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Dynamical Systems
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18268