Articles | Volume 8, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-4979-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-4979-2015
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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Status: closed
Status: closed
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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.