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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ARD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Aerosol Research Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ARD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Aerosol Research Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/ar-2026-42</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Sensitivity Analysis for a Statistical Prediction Model Utilized for Particle Number Concentrations with a Focus on Submicron Size Fractions</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ktaish</surname>
<given-names>Adeeb</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Atashi</surname>
<given-names>Nahid</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0241-6435</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Surakhi</surname>
<given-names>Ola</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Yu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Tianyi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zaidan</surname>
<given-names>Martha Arbayani</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6348-1230</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Petäjä</surname>
<given-names>Tuukka</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1881-9044</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jokinen</surname>
<given-names>Tuija</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1280-1396</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Du</surname>
<given-names>Wei</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7890-3099</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kulmala</surname>
<given-names>Markku</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3464-7825</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hussein</surname>
<given-names>Tareq</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR/Physics), Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, 00014  Helsinki, Finland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Climate &amp; Atmosphere Research Centre (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, 1645 Nicosia, Cyprus</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, American University of Madaba, Madaba, 11821, Jordan</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>School of Infrastructure Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, No. 2 Linggong Road, Ganjingzi District, Dalian 116024, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>University of Jordan, School of Science, Department of Physics, Environmental and Atmospheric Research Laboratory (EARL), Amman 11942, Jordan</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>09</day>
<month>11</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>60</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Adeeb Ktaish et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-42/">This article is available from https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-42/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-42/ar-2026-42.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://ar.copernicus.org/preprints/ar-2026-42/ar-2026-42.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Long-term particle number size distribution (PNSD) observations are sparse and costly to maintain, limiting their use for prediction and process attribution. We develop a Bayesian regression with autoregressive (AR) errors and sequential prediction, estimating posteriors via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The study uses multi-year data set from 1996 till 2024, hourly observations from three Finnish SMEAR stations&amp;mdash;SMEAR I (V&amp;auml;rri&amp;ouml;), SMEAR II (Hyyti&amp;auml;l&amp;auml;), and SMEAR III (Helsinki)&amp;mdash;with predictors drawn from routinely measured meteorology and trace gases. The developed model was applied on 5 different scenarios with different aims.Scenario I showed that expanding the historical training period improve or stabilize prediction performance. Scenario II demonstrated that predictive performance depends strongly on the training year. Scenario III showed that adding increasingly old observations provide no additional benefit once recent observations were already included. Scenario IV demonstrated that progressively updating the model with more recent data generally improved predictive performance. Scenario V showed that increasing the length of consecutive training windows generally reduced prediction errors. Addtionally, the model captures both diurnal and seasonal variability and achieves high coefficients of determination (&lt;em&gt;R&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;) at 1 h resolution indicating that most observed variability is explained. These results suggest a successful prediction for particle number concentrations. The potential of this approach is to make future forecasting for particle number concentrations for the up coming years.</p>
</abstract>
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