[R-sig-Geo] [OT?] time-series community?

[Tom Roche]

Dunno if this is the place to ask, but I'd appreciate pointers toward
learning about, and channels for asking questions about, analysis of
time series for evaluating model/obs fits. What I mean:

I'm a student working on process-modeling atmospheric N2O concentrations
over the contiguous US (CONUS), comparing hourly predictions to
daily observations at 4 towers. Sad, but there's just not much data.
And it gets worse! the N2O emissions inventories (EIs) driving the model
are currently annual, monthly, or daily. (Fortunately, both EIs and
datasets are improving; increased modeling may incent increased effort.)

Hence I'll want (once I get the model running, which seems imminent) to
test the time series of predictions against the time series of obs at
the tower locations. I'd like to test imposed temporalities, e.g.,

* model vs obs with imposed diurnality (so as to test hourly vs hourly)

* feeding EIs with imposed seasonality and diurnality to the model,
  comparing those predictions vs obs

Unfortunately my background is computer science, not physical science:
I know a bit about techniques like calculating standard deviation of
biases, still less about applying autocorrelation functions (e.g. acf,
pacf), and have only read wikipedia about AIC/AICc. I'm very much
interested in learning more, and would appreciate pointers toward

* resources (esp cookbooks and tutorials :-)

* places to ask when one encounters problems

that would assist me in practical application of tools (esp R-based
ones) in this domain.

Feel free to reply on- or off-list, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>