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