Complex Network Analysis of Ozone Transport

Abstract

<bold>Abstract</bold>Ozone transport has an important effect on the local ozone concentration. In this thesis, I model the California State, which has the highest ozone level of the whole country, and the Eastern States of America ozone transport as complex networks. California, which has a complex ozone transport due to geomorphology, is divided into 15 air basins to better manage air pollution. Based on the ozone transport estimation between air basins, I divide California into 68 counties to construct the ozone transport network (Californian County network). The nodes in the network represent the counties and edges represent the transport of ozone between them. I introduce a method to quantify the link weight of ozone transport between different counties and then establish an ozone transport network based on this estimation. Similarly, I establish an unweighted ozone transport network for the Eastern States of America (Eastern State network). Unlike California, the ozone transport in the Eastern States of America is mainly affected by wind speed and direction. Building these networks, I analyzed the complex network measures such as centrality, clustering, degree distribution, and community structures. In general, both networks exhibit similar properties. However, even though Californian county network has higher average degree it has smaller clustering than Eastern State network. Moreover, while Californian counties can be divided into four communities, Eastern States remain as a single community. Both of these points to the fact that ozone transport within Eastern States is more uniform than between the counties of California.