My paper titled ‘Visualizing the intercity correlation of PM_2.5 time series in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region using ground-based air quality monitoring data’ is accepted by PLOS One on 6 February 2018. It focuses on a pressing issue that gains tremendous worldwide attention and concerns: PM_2.5 pollution in China. While considerable research has been conducted toward understanding the PM_2.5 pollution in China including the characterization and spatial-temporal distribution of PM_2.5 pollution, driving factors of PM_2.5 pollution, etc., little research has been done on the dynamic interactions and relationships between PM_2.5 concentrations of different cities, and there is concern that problematic measures are being proposed without sufficient understanding of these relationships. In attempt to address this gap, this paper discovered a phenomenon of significant time-lagged intercity correlation of PM_2.5 concentration time series, and presented visualizations of this phenomenon. The contributions of this paper are three-fold: (1) the technique of visualization of the intercity correlation of PM_2.5 time series are useful and can be applied to other pollutants of interest, and (2) the visualizations manifest the interactions of air pollution in cities of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and demonstrate the significant effect of synoptic meteorological conditions on air pollution, which provides evidences of visualization and corroborates previous studies on the interaction of air pollution and the effect of meteorological conditions on air pollution, and (3) the visualizations can help determine the pathway of regional transportation of air pollution and may also be useful in delineating the area of influence of PM_2.5 pollution for impact analysis.

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