The development of PWV index for air pollution concentration detection in Banting, Malaysia

This study is aimed to clarify the ability of precipitable water vapor (PWV) index variability in detecting the air pollutants concentration in Banting, Selangor. For that purpose, we have developed the PWV index using the fuzzy clustering (Fuzzy C-Means (FCM)). There are five categories of PWV index, namely “Very Low”, “Low”,” Moderate”, “High” and “Very High”. Correlation analysis was performed on a daily averaged for five periods which were yearly, April to December, northeast monsoon (November-December), southwest monsoon (June to September) and two transition period (April-May) and October. From the preliminary results, we found that the concentrations of air pollutions have a small impact towards PWV index during the northeast monsoon and were not correlated during southwest monsoon. For the yearly period, the SO₂ and O₃ concentrations have a small impact towards PWV index and are not affected by the other concentrations. During the haze episode, the concentrations of air pollution found increased while the PWV index was decreased. Overall, the concentrations of air pollutants give a small impact to the variability of PWV index.