conditionalEval: Conditional quantile estimates with additional variables for...

In openair: Tools for the Analysis of Air Pollution Data

Conditional quantile estimates with additional variables for model evaluation

Description

This function enhances conditionalQuantile() by also considering how other variables vary over the same intervals. Conditional quantiles are very useful on their own for model evaluation, but provide no direct information on how other variables change at the same time. For example, a conditional quantile plot of ozone concentrations may show that low concentrations of ozone tend to be under-predicted. However, the cause of the under-prediction can be difficult to determine. However, by considering how well the model predicts other variables over the same intervals, more insight can be gained into the underlying reasons why model performance is poor.

Usage

conditionalEval(
  mydata,
  obs = "obs",
  mod = "mod",
  var.obs = "var.obs",
  var.mod = "var.mod",
  type = "default",
  bins = 31,
  statistic = "MB",
  cols = "YlOrRd",
  col.var = "Set1",
  var.names = NULL,
  auto.text = TRUE,
  plot = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

mydata	A data frame containing the field obs and mod representing observed and modelled values.
obs	The name of the observations in mydata.
mod	The name of the predictions (modelled values) in mydata.
var.obs	Other variable observations for which statistics should be calculated. Can be more than length one e.g. var.obs = c("nox.obs", "ws.obs").
var.mod	Other variable predictions for which statistics should be calculated. Can be more than length one e.g. var.mod = c("nox.mod", "ws.mod").
type	Character string(s) defining how data should be split/conditioned before plotting. "default" produces a single panel using the entire dataset. Any other options will split the plot into different panels - a roughly square grid of panels if one type is given, or a 2D matrix of panels if two types are given. type is always passed to cutData(), and can therefore be any of: A built-in type defined in cutData() (e.g., "season", "year", "weekday", etc.). For example, type = "season" will split the plot into four panels, one for each season. The name of a numeric column in mydata, which will be split into n.levels quantiles (defaulting to 4). The name of a character or factor column in mydata, which will be used as-is. Commonly this could be a variable like "site" to ensure data from different monitoring sites are handled and presented separately. It could equally be any arbitrary column created by the user (e.g., whether a nearby possible pollutant source is active or not). Most openair plotting functions can take two type arguments. If two are given, the first is used for the columns and the second for the rows.
bins	Number of bins to be used in calculating the different quantile levels.
statistic	Statistic(s) to be plotted. Can be “MB”, “NMB”, “r”, “COE”, “MGE”, “NMGE”, “RMSE” and “FAC2”. statistic can also be a variable name in the data frame or a date-based type (e.g. “season”), in which case the plot shows the proportions of that variable across the prediction intervals. A special case is “cluster”.
cols	Colours to use for plotting. Can be a pre-set palette (e.g., "turbo", "viridis", "tol", "Dark2", etc.) or a user-defined vector of R colours (e.g., c("yellow", "green", "blue", "black") - see colours() for a full list) or hex-codes (e.g., c("#30123B", "#9CF649", "#7A0403")). See openColours() for more details.
col.var	Colours for the additional variables. See openColours for more details.
var.names	Variable names to be shown in the legend for var.obs and var.mod.
auto.text	Either TRUE (default) or FALSE. If TRUE titles and axis labels will automatically try and format pollutant names and units properly, e.g., by subscripting the "2" in "NO2". Passed to quickText().
plot	When openair plots are created they are automatically printed to the active graphics device. plot = FALSE deactivates this behaviour. This may be useful when the plot data is of more interest, or the plot is required to appear later (e.g., later in a Quarto document, or to be saved to a file).
...	Other graphical parameters passed onto conditionalQuantile() and cutData().

Details

The conditionalEval function provides information on how other variables vary across the same intervals as shown on the conditional quantile plot. There are two types of variable that can be considered by setting the value of statistic. First, statistic can be another variable in the data frame. In this case the plot will show the different proportions of statistic across the range of predictions. For example statistic = "season" will show for each interval of mod the proportion of predictions that were spring, summer, autumn or winter. This is useful because if model performance is worse for example at high concentrations of mod then knowing that these tend to occur during a particular season etc. can be very helpful when trying to understand why a model fails. See cutData() for more details on the types of variable that can be statistic. Another example would be statistic = "ws" (if wind speed were available in the data frame), which would then split wind speed into four quantiles and plot the proportions of each.

Second, conditionalEval can simultaneously plot the model performance of other observed/predicted variable pairs according to different model evaluation statistics. These statistics derive from the modStats() function and include “MB”, “NMB”, “r”, “COE”, “MGE”, “NMGE”, “RMSE” and “FAC2”. More than one statistic can be supplied e.g. statistic = c("NMB", "COE"). Bootstrap samples are taken from the corresponding values of other variables to be plotted and their statistics with 95\ intervals calculated. In this case, the model performance of other variables is shown across the same intervals of mod, rather than just the values of single variables. In this second case the model would need to provide observed/predicted pairs of other variables.

For example, a model may provide predictions of NOx and wind speed (for which there are also observations available). The conditionalEval function will show how well these other variables are predicted for the same intervals of the main variables assessed in the conditional quantile e.g. ozone. In this case, values are supplied to var.obs (observed values for other variables) and var.mod (modelled values for other variables). For example, to consider how well the model predicts NOx and wind speed var.obs = c("nox.obs", "ws.obs") and var.mod = c("nox.mod", "ws.mod") would be supplied (assuming ⁠nox.obs, nox.mod, ws.obs, ws.mod⁠ are present in the data frame). The analysis could show for example, when ozone concentrations are under-predicted, the model may also be shown to over-predict concentrations of NOx at the same time, or under-predict wind speeds. Such information can thus help identify the underlying causes of poor model performance.

A special case is statistic = "cluster". In this case a data frame is provided that contains the cluster calculated by trajCluster() and importTraj(). Note that statistic = "cluster" cannot be used together with the ordinary model evaluation statistics such as MB. The output will be a bar chart showing the proportion of each interval of mod by cluster number.

Author(s)

David Carslaw

References

Wilks, D. S., 2005. Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 91, Second Edition (International Geophysics), 2nd Edition. Academic Press.

See Also

The verification package for comprehensive functions for forecast verification.

Other model evaluation functions: TaylorDiagram(), conditionalQuantile(), modStats()

openair documentation built on April 2, 2026, 9:07 a.m.