Variation of Surface Ozone Recorded at the Eastern Coastal Region of the Malaysian Peninsula
Abstract
Problem statement: Variations of ozone (O3) concentrations in the Eastern Coastal Region of the Malaysia peninsula were investigated using data obtained from the Malaysian Department of the Environment. The aim of this study was to determine the monthly and seasonal variations of ozone concentrations at all monitoring sites. This study deals with the air quality data recorded at four air quality monitoring stations in the East Coast of the Malaysian peninsula over a ten year period (1997- 2006). Approach: We focused on the usage of S-Plus and SPSS to analyze this data. The S-Plus programming was used to impute missing data and SPSS was used to obtain the variations of ozone and also to clarify the relationship between stations. Results: Over the entire 10 year period (1997- 2006), the trend in annual baseline ozone generally increased each year for all the four monitoring sites. There was also a seasonal variability in the measured ozone levels with high concentrations during the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon season, producing a significant increase in the amplitude of the seasonal cycle. The results also shown that the highest ozone concentrations were recorded at the Bukit Kuang air monitoring station (S1), with a daily mean value of 19 ppb followed by the Indera Mahkota air monitoring station (S2). The concentration of ozone recorded at Kota Bharu (S3) and Kuala Terengganu (S4), two stations located in the city centre, was found to be lower than the values recorded at Bukit Kuang and Indera Mahkota. The correlation between O3 and NO is high at Kuala Terengganu (S4) (ρ = -0.579), whilst the relationship between O3 and NO2 are high (ρ = -0.397) at Indera Mahkota (S2). Conclusion: The concentration of ozone in the East Coast of Malaysian peninsula depends on the concentration of NOx and seasonal meteorological factors.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajessp.2010.560.569
Copyright: © 2010 Aida Shafawati Ismail, Mohd Talib Latif, Siti Zawiyah Azmi, Liew Juneng and Abdul Aziz Jemain. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Concentration of ozone
- Time series
- Oxides of nitrogen
- The Malaysian peninsula
- Total Hydrocarbon (THC)
- Flame Ion Detector (FID)
- Package for Social Science (SPSS)
- ozone concentrations
- photochemical production
- solar radiation