Mathematics Colloquium (No. 954): Associate Professor Huang Guowen on Air Quality Model Calibration
It is reported that the Institute of Mathematics will host the 954th session of the “Toward Modern Mathematics” colloquium on July 6, featuring Associate Professor Huang Guowen from Western University as the speaker.
Talk Details
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Title | Spatially Varying Multi-Pollutant Calibration of Air Quality Model Outputs |
| Speaker | Associate Professor Huang Guowen (Western University) |
| Host | Associate Professor Chen Senming |
| Time | July 6, 2026, 11:00 |
| Venue | Donghai’an Campus, Room D-Shi 209 |
Abstract
Air quality monitoring networks provide reliable local measurements but are spatially sparse, while chemical transport models such as CMAQ provide complete gridded fields but can exhibit systematic local bias. This talk presents a spatially varying multi-pollutant calibration framework for integrating NAPS observations with CMAQ outputs for PM2.5, NO2, and O3 over Ontario. The proposed approach models each observed pollutant as a location-specific affine function of the CMAQ pollutant vector, allowing both pollutant-specific correction and cross-pollutant borrowing. Smooth coefficient surfaces are estimated using radial basis functions and penalized least squares, then transferred from monitoring sites to CMAQ grid cells to produce calibrated spatial fields. The talk will discuss the data construction, motivation from station-level heterogeneity, model formulation, coefficient interpretation, prediction transfer, and practical limitations. Results show that spatially varying calibration improves fitted error relative to a global multivariate calibration benchmark and provides interpretable maps of local bias, scaling, and cross-pollutant structure.
About the Speaker
Dr. Huang Guowen is an Assistant Professor in Statistics at Western University. He earned his PhD in Statistics from the University of Glasgow and previously held postdoctoral research positions at National Tsing Hua University and the University of Toronto. Before joining Western, Dr. Huang was an Associate Professor at Shantou University. His research specializes in spatial statistics, particularly the statistical modeling of air pollution data and its effects on human health.
Source: STU OA Notice (Institute of Mathematics)