{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,11]],"date-time":"2026-04-11T05:42:43Z","timestamp":1775886163367,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,9]],"date-time":"2026-04-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1775692800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"2025 Chongqing Social Science Popularization Project","award":["2025KP026"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025KP026"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100005230","name":"Chongqing Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["CSTB2025NSCQ-GPX0990"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CSTB2025NSCQ-GPX0990"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100005230","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission","award":["KJQN202500503"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["KJQN202500503"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission","award":["KJQN202500502"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["KJQN202500502"]}]},{"name":"Chongqing Social Science Planning Doctoral Project","award":["2024BS083"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024BS083"]}]},{"name":"Foundation Program of Chongqing Normal University","award":["24XWB042"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["24XWB042"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Accurate prediction of the air quality index (AQI) is crucial for understanding urban pollution dynamics and protecting public health. This study proposes a dual-branch fusion framework (CL-XGB-Season) to address seasonal heterogeneity in AQI prediction by integrating temporal dynamic features and static patterns. The CNN-LSTM branch captures short-term temporal fluctuations, while a seasonally split XGBoost branch fits long-term static patterns via independent submodels for spring, summer, autumn, and winter. SHAP-based interpretability analysis revealed the dominant drivers across different seasons: the \u201ctemperature \u00d7 O3\u201d interaction feature plays a key role in summer, characterizing the ozone formation mechanism dominated by photochemical reactions under conditions of high temperature and strong solar radiation; whereas the PM2.5\/PM10 ratio is crucial in winter (where pollution is primarily driven by pollutant accumulation). The dual-branch fusion framework was validated using hourly resolution data from Chongqing for the 2020\u20132025 period. Results indicate that the framework achieved a prediction accuracy of 0.197 root mean square error (nRMSE) and 0.9611 coefficient of determination (R2) on the test set, outperforming eight ablation variants and five baseline models (ARIMA, Transformer, etc.) in comparative experiments. Ablation studies confirm the necessity of dual branches and seasonal modeling, with the full model reducing nRMSE by 19\u201363% versus single-model variants. This framework maintains stable seasonal performance and provides actionable insights for targeted air quality management.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e28040419","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,9]],"date-time":"2026-04-09T12:21:32Z","timestamp":1775737292000},"page":"419","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Mixed Forecast of Air Quality Index with a Bibranch Parallel Architecture Considering Seasonal Heterogeneity"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"28","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5499-9217","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Huibin","family":"Zeng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Economics and Management, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ying","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Economics and Management, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hongbin","family":"Dai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Computer and Information Science, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xue","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Management, Xi\u2019an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi\u2019an 710055, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ning","family":"Tian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Management, Xi\u2019an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi\u2019an 710055, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2572","DOI":"10.1016\/j.psep.2024.10.018","article-title":"A Novel Hybrid Prediction Model of Air Quality Index Based on Variational Modal Decomposition and CEEMDAN-SE-GRU","volume":"191","author":"Tang","year":"2024","journal-title":"Process Saf. 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