Analyse Your Temporal Data

Analyse your time series data and decompose it into seasonal characteristics and long-term trends.

Learning objectives

At the end of this session you should be able to

  • explain some different strategies for time-series decomposition,
  • discuss why some care should be taken in pre-processing time series prior to trend analysis,
  • use e.g. linear models for explaining trends.

Time series decomposition

Dynamics of environmental variables are often composed of very short term, intermediate (seasonal) and long-term (trend) variations. When analysing time series data, the decomposition into the respective components offers insights into driver-response relationships as basis for further analyses.

Illustration of time series decomposition using the R CO2 dataset as an example.

The above graphic shows the decomposition of the CO2 dataset from R’s forecast library (Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 concentration).

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