Evaluation of a data fusion approach to estimate daily PM{sub 2.5} levels in North China
PM{sub 2.5} air pollution has been a growing concern worldwide. Previous studies have conducted several techniques to estimate PM{sub 2.5} exposure spatiotemporally in China, but all these have limitations. This study was to develop a data fusion approach and compare it with kriging and Chemistry Module. Two techniques were applied to create daily spatial cover of PM{sub 2.5} in grid cells with a resolution of 10 km in North China in 2013, respectively, which was kriging with an external drift (KED) and Weather Research and Forecast Model with Chemistry Module (WRF-Chem). A data fusion technique was developed by fusing PM{sub 2.5} concentration predicted by KED and WRF-Chem, accounting for the distance from the central of grid cell to the nearest ground observations and daily spatial correlations between WRF-Chem and observations. Model performances were evaluated by comparing them with ground observations and the spatial prediction errors. KED and data fusion performed better at monitoring sites with a daily model R{sup 2} of 0.95 and 0.94, respectively and PM{sub 2.5} was overestimated by WRF-Chem (R{sup 2}=0.51). KED and data fusion performed better around the ground monitors, WRF-Chem performed relative worse with high prediction errors in the central of study domain. In our study, both KED and data fusion technique provided highly accurate PM{sub 2.5}. Current monitoring network in North China was dense enough to provide a reliable PM{sub 2.5} prediction by interpolation technique. - Highlights: • KED and data fusion model predicted daily PM{sub 2.5} with high accuracy. • WRF-Chem performed worse in PM{sub 2.5} prediction compared with KED and data fusion. • The PM{sub 2.5} monitoring network in North China was able to support reliable PM{sub 2.5} interpolation.