Relationship analysis between meteorological factors and concentration of air pollutants

Air is an essential asset in daily life and air pollution is a global problem that concerns society. Apart from obvious factors of air pollution, this study aims to investigate the influence of meteorological parameters such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed on air pollution whether they affect the concentration of pollutants like CO, NO2, SO2, PM10 and O3. Pearson correlation analysis is conducted to determine the significance and strength of relationships between the concentrations of each pollutant with meteorological parameters from January to November 2011 in Malaysia. The results of Pearson correlation analysis show that there is a significant correlation between the concentrations of pollutants with temperature at 5% level of significance. PM10 has a significant negative correlation with humidity while CO, NO2 and O3 negatively correlated at 5% level of significance with wind speed. Then, simple linear, polynomial, exponential, and multiple linear regression models were built to further explore the relationship between meteorological factors and the concentration of air pollutants. The regression models obtained show that CO, NO2, and O3 pollutants are dependent on temperature, humidity, and wind speed where the dependence of these three pollutants on wind velocity is negative while the dependence on temperature and humidity are positive. As for PM10 pollutants, it was found that it has a relationship with both temperature and humidity. Meanwhile, for SO2, it only showed a significant relationship with temperature. Overall, the model and results obtained in this study can be used for air quality prediction and management in Malaysia.