Spectral-decomposition techniques for the identification of periodic and anomalous phenomena in radon time-series

Abstract

Two hourly-sampled time-series of soil-gas radon concentrations of durations of the order of a year have been investigated for periodic and anomalous phenomena. These time-series have been recorded in locations having little or no routine human behaviour and thus are effectively free of significant anthropogenic influences. One measurement site, Sur-Frêtes, is located in the French Alps, with saturated soil conditions; the second site, Syabru-Bensi, is located in Nepal, in a river terrace with unsaturated soil conditions. In such conditions, periodic components with periods ranging from 8 h to 7 days are often weak and intermittent and therefore, even in the presence of stationary forcing, difficult to identify. <br><br> Two spectral decomposition techniques, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA), have been applied to these time series and yield similar results. For Sur-Frêtes, weak diurnal and semi-diurnal components are observed with EMD, while SSA reveals only a diurnal component. In Syabru-Bensi, both EMD and SSA reveal a strong diurnal component and a weaker semi-diurnal component. Tidal components M1 and M2 are also suggested by EMD in Sur-Frêtes, while these frequencies are not observed in Syabru-Bensi. The development of such analytical techniques can help in characterising the multiple physical processes contributing to the surface and subsurface dynamics of soil gases.