The spectral variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is one of the key features that enables us to study in more detail, the structure of AGN emitting regions. Especially, the broad line profiles that vary both in flux and shape, give us invaluable information about the kinematics and geometry of the broad line region (BLR) where these lines are originating from. We give here a comparative review of the line shape variability in a sample of five type 1 AGNs, those with broad emission lines in their spectra, of the data obtained from the international long-term optical monitoring campaign coordinated by the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Science. The main aim of this campaign is to study the physics and kinematics of the BLR on a uniform data set, focusing on the problems of the photoionization heating of the BLR and its geometry, where, in this paper, we give for a first time, a comparative analysis of the variabilty of five type 1 AGNs, discussing their complex BLR physics and geometry in the framework of the estimates of the supermassive black hole mass in AGN.

Here we investigate light curves of the continuum and emission lines of five type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) from our monitoring campaign, to test time-evolution of their time delays. Using both modeled and observed AGN light curves, we apply Gaussian kernel-based estimator to capture variation of local patterns of their time evolving delays. The largest variations of time delays of all objects occur in the period when continuum or emission lines luminosity is the highest. However, Gaussian kernel-based method shows instability in the case of NGC 5548, 3C 390.3, E1821+643 and NGC 4051 possibly due to numerical discrepancies between damped random walk (DRW) time scale of light curves and sliding time windows of the method. The temporal variations of time lags of Arp 102B can correspond to the real nature of the time lag evolution.