Superstatistical approach to air pollution statistics
Griffin Williams, Benjamin Schäfer, Christian Beck
Abstract
In this work the authors analyze time series of Nitritic Oxide (NO) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO${}_{2}$) concentrations and find that the probability distributions of these pollutants exhibit heavy tails. The observed dynamics is consistently explained by a superposition of local exponential, respectively local Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions with time-varying parameters in the pollutant concentration trajectory, allowing for precise risk estimates of high pollution situations.
Topics & Concepts
Superposition principlePollutantEnvironmental scienceSeries (stratigraphy)Statistical physicsNitrogen dioxidePollutionTrajectoryExponential functionProbability distributionStatisticsMathematicsMeteorologyPhysicsChemistryMathematical analysisPaleontologyOrganic chemistryAstronomyBiologyEcologyStatistical Mechanics and EntropyGaussian Processes and Bayesian InferenceEcosystem dynamics and resilience