A Study of Precipitation Forecasting for the Pre-Summer Rainy Season in South China Based on a Back-Propagation Neural Network

Abstract

In South China, the large quantity of rainfall in the pre-summer rainy season can easily lead to natural disasters, which emphasizes the importance of improving the accuracy of precipitation forecasting during this period for the social and economic development of the region. In this paper, the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) is used to establish the model for precipitation forecasting. Three schemes are applied to improve the model performance: (1) predictors are selected based on individual meteorological stations within the region rather than the region as a whole; (2) the triangular irregular network (TIN) is proposed to preprocess the observed precipitation data for input of the BPNN model, while simulated/forecast precipitation is the expected output; and (3) a genetic algorithm is used for the hyperparameter optimization of the BPNN. The first scheme reduces the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and the root mean square error (RMSE) of the simulation by roughly 5% and more than 15 mm; the second reduces the MAPE and RMSE by more than 15% and 15 mm, respectively, while the third improves the simulation inapparently. Obviously, the second scheme raises the upper limit of the model simulation capability greatly by preprocessing the precipitation data. During the training and validation periods, the MAPE of the improved model can be controlled at approximately 35%. For precipitation hindcasting in the test period, the anomaly rate is less than 50% in only one season, and the highest is 64.5%. According to the anomaly correlation coefficient and Ps score of the hindcast precipitation, the improved model performance is slightly better than the FGOALS-f2 model. Although global climate change makes the predictors more variable, the trend of simulation is almost identical to that of the observed values over the whole period, suggesting that the model is able to capture the general characteristics of climate change.

Application of RNN-LSTM in Predicting Drought Patterns in Pakistan: A Pathway to Sustainable Water Resource Management

“…The current study's findings show that employing the input optimization procedure may achieve modelling accuracy, optimal structure, decreased computational time, optimized inputs, and reduced modelling complexity. In addition, the integrated optimization methods are highly effective in generating robust models with improved output compared to standalone ANN, SVM, GEP, RF, and other regression models [31][32][33]69,70]. As the population of Pakistan has risen over the past decade and the water resources of Pakistan have continuously declined, the result of the model shows that a serious issue needs to be addressed.…”

“…The replenishment is facilitated by the inflow of river water, primarily resulting from substantial precipitation during the monsoon period. The shallow aquifer is refilled through water infiltration from lakes, rivers, and irrigation canals, potentially carrying groundwater contaminants [36,70]. The researchers employed a geographical information system (GIS) to measure groundwater depressions quantitatively.…”