Investigating the underlying structure of particulate matter concentrations: a functional exploratory data analysis study using California monitoring data

Abstract

Functional data analysis continues to attract interest because advances in technology across many fields have increasingly permitted measurements to be made from continuous processes on a discretized scale. Particulate matter is among the most harmful air pollutants affecting public health and the environment, and levels of PM10 (particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter) for regions of California remain among the highest in the United States. The relatively high frequency of particulate matter sampling enables us to regard the data as functional data. In this work, we investigate the dominant modes of variation of PM10 using functional data analysis methodologies. Our analysis provides insight into the underlying data structure of PM10, and it captures the size and temporal variation of this underlying data structure. In addition, our study shows that certain aspects of size and temporal variation of the underlying PM10 structure are associated with changes in large-scale climate indices that quantify variations of sea surface temperature and atmospheric circulation patterns.