Threshold autoregression models for forecasting El Nino events

-In this paper, monthly mean SST data in a large area are used. After the spacial average of the data is carried out and the secular monthly means are substracted, a time series (Jan. 1951-Dec. 1985) of SST anomalies of the cold tongue water area in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean is obtained. On the basis of the time series, an autoregression model, a self-exciting threshold autoregression model and an open loop autoregression model are developed respectively. The interannual variations are simulated by means of those models. The simulation results show that all the three models have made very good hindcasting for the nine El Nino events since 1951. In order to test the reliability of the open loop threshold model, extrapolated forecast was made for the period of Jan. 1986-Feb. 1987. It can be seen from the forecasting that the model could forecast well the beginning and strengthening stages of the recent El Nino event (1986-1987). Correlation coefficients of the estimations to observations are respectively 0. 84, 0. 88 and 0. 89. It is obvious that all the models work well and the open loop threshold one is the best. So the open loop threshold autoregression model is a useful tool for monitoring the SSTinterannual variation of the cold tongue water area in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean and for estimating the El Nino strength.

Analyzing short time series data from periodically fluctuating rodent populations by thresholdmodels: A nearest block bootstrap approach

The study of the rodent fluctuations of the North was initiated in its modern form with Elton's pioneering work.Many scientific studies have been designed to collect yearly rodent abundance data,but the resulting time series are generally subject to at least two "problems":being short and non-linear.We explore the use of the continuous threshold autoregressive(TAR) models for analyzing such data.In the simplest case,the continuous TAR models are additive autoregressive models,being piecewise linear in one lag,and linear in all other lags.The location of the slope change is called the threshold parameter.The continuous TAR models for rodent abundance data can be derived from a general prey-predator model under some simplifying assumptions.The lag in which the threshold is located sheds important insights on the structure of the prey-predator system.We propose to assess the uncertainty on the location of the threshold via a new bootstrap called the nearest block bootstrap(NBB) which combines the methods of moving block bootstrap and the nearest neighbor bootstrap.The NBB assumes an underlying finite-order time-homogeneous Markov process.Essentially,the NBB bootstraps blocks of random block sizes,with each block being drawn from a non-parametric estimate of the future distribution given the realized past bootstrap series.We illustrate the methods by simulations and on a particular rodent abundance time series from Kilpisjrvi,Northern Finland.

MODELING AND PREDICTION CONCERNING TIME SERIES OF FLOOD/DROUGHT RUNS USING THE SELF-EXCITING THRESHOLD AUTOREGRESSIVE MODEL

When linear regressive models such as AR or ARMA model are used for fitting and predicting climatic time series,results are often not sufficiently good because nonlinear variations in the time series.In this paper, a nonlinear self-exciting threshold autoregressive(SETAR)model is applied to modeling and predicting the time series of flood/drought runs in Beijing,which were derived from the graded historical flood/drought records in the last 511 years(1470—1980).The results show that the modeling and predicting with the SETAR model are much better than that of the AR model.The latter can predict the flood/drought runs with a length only less than two years,while the formal can predict more than three-year length runs.This may be due to the fact that the SETAR model can renew the model according to the run-turning points in the process of predic- tion,though the time series is nonstationary.