Spatial-temporal models for ambient hourly PM10 in Vancouver

Abstract

In this article we develop and compare several space–time models for hourly ambient PM10 collected in the Vancouver area. The models consist of a deterministic trend plus stochastic residuals. We find that the ambient PM10 field over the area has an essentially constant temporal pattern across its monitoring sites; the spatial variation is relatively small. Our comparison leads us in the end to adopt a model with a common temporal correlation structure for all the sites. The residuals after eliminating serial correlation prove to have at most small-scale spatial correlations, suggesting that dense monitoring networks would be necessary to make widespread spatial interpolation meaningful. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.