Application of machine learning approaches in the analysis of mass absorption cross-section of black carbon aerosols: Aerosol composition dependencies and sensitivity analyses

Details

• Journal Title:
  Aerosol Science and Technology
• Personal Author:
  May, Andrew A. ; Li, Hanyang
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research)
• Description:
  Physics-based models typically require an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon and assumptions of the underlying process(es), which are often hard to obtain in practice, whereas data-driven machine learning models learn the structure and patterns in the training data without any prior theoretical assumptions and then use inference to develop useful predictions. A novel machine learning-based algorithm has been previously developed for the prediction of black carbon mass absorption cross-section (MACBC) and applied to a variety of different atmospheric environments. In contrast to light scattering theories which require assumptions about the underlying physics, this algorithm uses time-series data of aerosol properties to estimate the temporally varying MACBC at 870 nm. Here, we analyze our algorithm and discuss the influence of aerosol optical properties (such as Ångström exponents and single scattering albedo) and chemical composition on the model outputs and the associated accuracy. Additionally, we conduct sensitivity analyses on our models to understand how the predictions change in response to different sets of input variables. Our support vector machine (SVM) for regression model is the least sensitive to variations in the input variables, although all models tend to exhibit a degradation to their accuracy when scattering Ångström exponents are less than one.
• Keywords:
  Environmental Chemistry General Materials Science Pollution
• Source:
  Aerosol Science and Technology, 56(11), 998-1008
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2022.2114312
• ISSN:
  0278-6826 ; 1521-7388
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  Informa UK Limited
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA16OAR4310109
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY-NC-ND
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:da4037695f7cd141c87e40a62cf4983d6dea03dd9b8dcd43c03c6208f16f2abe
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/59393/noaa_59393_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.56 MB ]