The potential of statistical state space models in urban ozone forecasting

State space models for tropospheric urban ozone prediction are introduced and compared with linear regression models. The linear and non-linear state space models make accurate short-term predictions of the ozone dynamics. The average prediction error one hour in advance is 7 microg/m(3) and increases logarithmically with time until it reaches 26 microg/m(3) after 30 days. For a given sequence of solar radiation inputs, predictions converge exponentially with a time scale of 8 hours, so that the model is insensitive to perturbations of more than 150 microg/m(3) O(3). The slow increase of the prediction error in addition to the uniqueness of the prediction are encouraging for applications of state space models in forecasting ozone levels when coupled with a model that predicts total radiation. Since a radiation prediction model will be more accurate during cloud-free conditions, in addition to the fact that the state space models perform better during the summer months, state space models are suitable for applications in sunny environments.