Deep learning-based subseasonal to seasonal precipitation prediction in southwest China:Algorithm comparison and sensitivity to input features

The prediction of precipitation at subseasonal to seasonal(S2S)timescales remains an enormous challenge because of the gap between weather and climate predictions.This study compares three deep learning algorithms,namely,the long short-term memory recurrent(LSTM),gated recurrent unit(GRU),and recurrent neural network(RNN),and selects the optimal algorithm to establish an S2S precipitation prediction model.The models were evaluated in four subregions of the Sichuan Province:the Plateau,Valley,eastern Basin,and western Basin.The results showed that the RNN model had better performance than the LSTM and GRU models.This could be because the RNN model had an advantage over the LSTM model in the transformation of climate indices with positive and negative variations.In the validation of test datasets,the RNN model successfully predicted the precipitation trend in most years during the wet season(May-October).The RNN model had a lower prediction bias(within±10%),higher sign accuracy of the precipitation trend(~88.95%),and greater accuracy of the maximum precipitation month(>0.85).For the prediction of different lead times,the RNN model was able to provide a stable trend prediction for summer precipitation,and the time correlation coefficient score was higher than that of the National Climate Center of China.Furthermore,this study proposed a method to measure the sensitivity of the RNN model to different input features,which may provide unprecedented insights into the nonlinear relationship and complicated feedback process among climate systems.The results of the sensitivity distribution are as follows.First,the Niño 4 and Niño 3.4 indices were equally important for the prediction of wet season precipitation.Second,the sensitivity of the snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau was higher than that in the Northern Hemisphere.Third,an opposite sensitivity appeared in two different patterns of the Indian Ocean and sea ice concentrations in the Arctic and the Barents Sea.

A hybrid model for short-term rainstorm forecasting based on a back-propagation neural network and synoptic diagnosis

Rainstorms are one of the most important types of natural disaster in China.In order to enhance the ability to forecast rainstorms in the short term,this paper explores how to combine a back-propagation neural network(BPNN)with synoptic diagnosis for predicting rainstorms,and analyzes the hit rates of rainstorms for the above two methods using the county of Tianquan as a case study.Results showed that the traditional synoptic diagnosis method still has an important referential meaning for most rainstorm types through synoptic typing and statistics of physical quantities based on historical cases,and the threat score(TS)of rainstorms was more than 0.75.However,the accuracy for two rainstorm types influenced by low-level easterly inverted troughs was less than 40%.The BPNN method efficiently forecasted these two rainstorm types;the TS and equitable threat score(ETS)of rainstorms were 0.80 and 0.79,respectively.The TS and ETS of the hybrid model that combined the BPNN and synoptic diagnosis methods exceeded the forecast score of multi-numerical simulations over the Sichuan Basin without exception.This kind of hybrid model enhanced the forecasting accuracy of rainstorms.The findings of this study provide certain reference value for the future development of refined forecast models with local features.