Spatial and temporal characteristics of particulate matter (PM 10) concentration in Peninsular Malaysia during the dry season
Abstract
Particulate matter is the most prevailing air pollutant in Malaysia. PM10 is one of the air contaminants that can be harmful to human health. The descriptive statistics was analyzed to find the measure tendency and measure dispersion. During the dry season, the concentration of PM10 is higher compare to normal. In this research area, there are three different places that had been
studied. The objective of this study is to determine the concentration of PM10 during the dry season in Klang (urban area), Muar (sub urban area) and Pasir Gudang (industrialized). Among these monitoring stations, Klang indicated the highest concentration of PM10 which is due to
influence of heavy traffic, densely population and number of vehicles. The higher PM10 concentrations are observed during Southwest monsoon season. The values are lower during the
Northeast monsoon season. There are several significant sources of air pollutants which vary
depending on the background of the location they originate from. Additionally, meteorological
factors, particularly the wind speed, ambient temperature and humidity may influence the
concentration of PM10 in the atmosphere. For PCA to find the correlation between PM10 and
meteorological parameter for each places. The meteorological parameter was analyzed for five
years data. While, for the last method, the cluster analysis, PM10 data for five years was used to
identify the similarity behavior characteristics in three different monitoring stations. Muar and
Pasir Gudang shows the similar behavior pollutant for each others