Evaluation of hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis methods for discrimination of primary biological aerosol

Crawford, I.; Ruske, S.; Topping, D. O.; Gallagher, M. W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-4979-2015

Articles | Volume 8, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-4979-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-4979-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 11

Research article

|

27 Nov 2015

Research article |

| 27 Nov 2015

Evaluation of hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis methods for discrimination of primary biological aerosol

I. Crawford, S. Ruske, D. O. Topping, and M. W. Gallagher

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Nov 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Jul 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C2575: 'Review of Evaluation of hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis methods for discrimination of primary biological aerosol', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Aug 2015
- AC C3667: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #2', Ian Crawford, 29 Oct 2015
RC C2670: 'Review of Crawford et al. AMTD', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Aug 2015
- AC C3666: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #1', Ian Crawford, 29 Oct 2015

Short summary

HCA analysis methods were evaluated for the purpose of identifying primary biological aerosol sampled with a WIBS. The ward linkage with z-score normalisation could discriminate between five test particles with 98% accuracy. We applied these methods to a previously studied ambient data set, where both methods produced similar results with some minor differences in cluster partitioning. Finally we compared to previous approaches and found our new method offered improved quantification of PBA.