Response to discussion on: 'An integrated statistical approach for evaluating the exceedance of criteria pollutants in the ambient air of megacity Delhi', Atmospheric Environment

摘要

The primary purpose of the paper is not to estimate exceedance probabilities over multiple time periods, but to propose a tool for evaluating compliance of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the basic framework of which is inherently statistical rather than deterministic. The criteria for judging the compliance of NAAQS is: "24-hourly/8-hourly values should be met 98% of time in a year; however, 2% of time it may exceed but not on two consecutive days". Thus, knowledge and availability of the probability density function {pdf) is essentially built in the compliance criterion.