Abstract:

The last decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the availability of data sets that are inherently global and temporally evolving, from remotely sensed networks to climate model en- sembles. This paper provides a view of statistical modeling techniques for space-time processes, where space is the sphere representing our planet. In particular, we make a distintion between (a) second order-based, and (b) practical approaches to model temporally evolving global pro- cesses. The former are based on the specification of a class of space-time covariance functions, with space being the two-dimensional sphere. The latter are based on explicit description of the dynamics of the space-time process, i.e., by specifying its evolution as a function of its past history with added spatially dependent noise.

We especially focus on approach (a), where the literature has been sparse. We provide new models of space-time covariance functions for random fields defined on spheres cross time. Prac- tical approaches, (b), are also discussed, with special emphasis on models built directly on the sphere, without projecting the spherical coordinate on the plane.

We present a case study focused on the analysis of air pollution from the 2015 wildfires in Equa- torial Asia, an event which was classified as the year’s worst environmental disaster. The paper finishes with a list of the main theoretical and applied research problems in the area, where we expect the statistical community to engage over the next decade