scholarly journals Coupling a Markov Chain and Support Vector Machine for At-Site Downscaling of Daily Precipitation

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 2385-2406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Kun Hou ◽  
Hua Chen ◽  
Chong-Yu Xu ◽  
Jie Chen ◽  
Sheng-Lian Guo

Abstract Statistical downscaling is useful for managing scale and resolution problems in outputs from global climate models (GCMs) for climate change impact studies. To improve downscaling of precipitation occurrence, this study proposes a revised regression-based statistical downscaling method that couples a support vector classifier (SVC) and first-order two-state Markov chain to generate the occurrence and a support vector regression (SVR) to simulate the amount. The proposed method is compared to the Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) for reproducing the temporal and quantitative distribution of observed precipitation using 10 meteorological indicators. Two types of calibration and validation methods were compared. The first method used sequential split sampling of calibration and validation periods, while the second used odd years for calibration and even years for validation. The proposed coupled approach outperformed the other methods in downscaling daily precipitation in all study periods using both calibration methods. Using odd years for calibration and even years for validation can reduce the influence of possible climate change–induced nonstationary data series. The study shows that it is necessary to combine different types of precipitation state classifiers with a method of regression or distribution to improve the performance of traditional statistical downscaling. These methods were applied to simulate future precipitation change from 2031 to 2100 with the CMIP5 climate variables. The results indicated increasing tendencies in both mean and maximum future precipitation predicted using all the downscaling methods evaluated. However, the proposed method is an at-site statistical downscaling method, and therefore this method will need to be modified for extension into a multisite domain.

Author(s):  
Kanawut Chattrairat ◽  
Waranyu Wongseree ◽  
Adisorn Leelasantitham

The climate change which is essential for daily life and especially agriculture has been forecasted by global climate models (GCMs) in the past few years. Statistical downscaling method (SD) has been used to improve the GCMs and enables the projection of local climate. Many pieces of research have studied climate change in case of individually seasonal temperature and precipitation for simulation; however, regional difference has not been included in the calculation. In this research, four fundamental SDs, linear regression (LR), Gaussian process (GP), support vector machine (SVM) and deep learning (DL), are studied for daily maximum temperature (TMAX), daily minimum temperature (TMIN), and precipitation (PRCP) based on the statistical relationship between the larger-scale climate predictors and predictands in Thailand. Additionally, the data sets of climate variables from over 45 weather stations overall in Thailand are used to calculate in this calculation. The statistical analysis of two performance criteria (correlation and root mean square error (RMSE)) shows that the DL provides the best performance for simulation. The TMAX and TMIN were calculated and gave a similar trend for all models. PRCP results found that in the North and South are adequate and poor performance due to high and low precipitation, respectively. We illustrate that DL is one of the suitable models for the climate change problem.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 879-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Vasiliades ◽  
A. Loukas ◽  
G. Patsonas

Abstract. Despite uncertainties in future climates, there is considerable evidence that there will be substantial impacts on the environment and human interests. Climate change will affect the hydrology of a region through changes in the timing, amount, and form of precipitation, evaporation and transpiration rates, and soil moisture, which in turn affect also the drought characteristics in a region. Droughts are long-term phenomena affecting large regions causing significant damages both in human lives and economic losses. The most widely used approach in regional climate impact studies is to combine the output of the General Circulation Models (GCMs) with an impact model. The outputs of Global Circulation Model CGCMa2 were applied for two socioeconomic scenarios, namely, SRES A2 and SRES B2 for the assessment of climate change impact on droughts. In this study, a statistical downscaling method has been applied for monthly precipitation. The methodology is based on multiple regression of GCM predictant variables with observed precipitation developed in an earlier paper (Loukas et al., 2008) and the application of a stochastic timeseries model for precipitation residuals simulation (white noise). The methodology was developed for historical period (1960–1990) and validated against observed monthly precipitation for period 1990–2002 in Lake Karla watershed, Thessaly, Greece. The validation indicated the accuracy of the methodology and the uncertainties propagated by the downscaling procedure in the estimation of a meteorological drought index the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at multiple timescales. Subsequently, monthly precipitation and SPI were estimated for two future periods 2020–2050 and 2070–2100. The results of the present study indicate the accuracy, reliability and uncertainty of the statistical downscaling method for the assessment of climate change on hydrological, agricultural and water resources droughts. Results show that climate change will have a major impact on droughts but the uncertainty introduced is quite large and is increasing as SPI timescale increases. Larger timescales of SPI, which, are used to monitor hydrological and water resources droughts, are more sensitive to climate change than smaller timescales, which, are used to monitor meteorological and agricultural droughts. Future drought predictions should be handled with caution and their uncertainty should always be evaluated as results demonstrate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaming Liu ◽  
Di Yuan ◽  
Liping Zhang ◽  
Xia Zou ◽  
Xingyuan Song

Many downscaling techniques have been developed in the past few years for projection of station-scale hydrological variables from large-scale atmospheric variables to assess the hydrological impacts of climate change. To improve the simulation accuracy of downscaling methods, the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) method combined with three statistical downscaling methods, which are support vector machine (SVM), BCC/RCG-Weather Generators (BCC/RCG-WG), and Statistics Downscaling Model (SDSM), is proposed in this study, based on the statistical relationship between the larger scale climate predictors and observed precipitation in upper Hanjiang River Basin (HRB). The statistical analysis of three performance criteria (the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency, the coefficient of correlation, and the relative error) shows that the performance of ensemble downscaling method based on BMA for rainfall is better than that of each single statistical downscaling method. Moreover, the performance for the runoff modelled by the SWAT rainfall-runoff model using the downscaled daily rainfall by four methods is also compared, and the ensemble downscaling method has better simulation accuracy. The ensemble downscaling technology based on BMA can provide scientific basis for the study of runoff response to climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Schellander-Gorgas ◽  
Philip Lorenz ◽  
Frank Kreienkamp ◽  
Christoph Matulla

<p>EPISODES is an empirical statistical downscaling method which has been developed at the German national weather service, DWD (Kreienkamp et al. 2019). Its main aim is the downscaling of climate projections and climate predictions (seasonal to decadal) from global climate models (GCMs) to regional scale. A specific aim is to enhance ensembles based on dynamical downscaling and to improve robustness of deduced indices and statements.</p><p>The methodology involves two main steps, first, analogue downscaling in connection with linear regression and, second, a sort of weather generator. An important precondition is the availability of long-term observation data sets of high quality and resolution. The synthetic time-series resulting from EPISODES are multivariate and consistent in space and time. The data provide daily values for selected surface variables and can be delivered on grid or station representation. As such, they meet the main requirements for applications in climate impact research. Thanks to low computational needs, EPISODES can provide climate projections within short time. This enables early insights in the local effects of climate change as projected by GCMs and allows flexibility in the selection of ensembles.</p><p>While good results for EPISODES projections have already been achieved for Germany, the methodology needs to be adapted for the more complex terrain of the Alpine region. This is done in close collaboration of DWD and ZAMG (Austria). Among other tasks, the adaptions include a regionalization of the selection of relevant weather regimes, optimal fragmentation of the target region into climatic sub-zones and correction of precipitation class frequencies.</p><p>The presentation will refer to the progress of the adaption process. In doing so the quality of downscaled climate projections is shown for a test ensemble in comparison with existing projections of the Austrian ÖKS15 data set and EURO-CORDEX. </p><p>Reference: Kreienkamp, F., Paxian, A., Früh, B., Lorenz, P., Matulla, C.: Evaluation of the empirical–statistical downscaling method EPISODES. <em>Clim Dyn</em> <strong>52, </strong>991–1026 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4276-2</p>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Els Van Uytven ◽  
Jan De Niel ◽  
Patrick Willems

Abstract. In recent years many methods for statistical downscaling of the climate model outputs have been developed. Each statistical downscaling method (SDM) has strengths and limitations, but those are rarely evaluated. This paper proposes an approach to evaluate the skill of SDMs for the specific purpose of impact analysis in hydrology. The skill is evaluated by the verification of the general statistical downscaling assumptions, and by the perfect predictor experiment that includes hydrological impact analysis. The approach has been tested for an advanced weather typing based SDM and for impact analysis on river peak flows in a Belgian river catchment. Significant shortcomings of the selected SDM were uncovered such as biases in the frequency of weather types and non-stationarities in the extreme precipitation distribution per weather type. Such evaluation of SDMs becomes of use for future tailoring of SDM ensembles to end user needs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 991-1026 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Kreienkamp ◽  
Andreas Paxian ◽  
Barbara Früh ◽  
Philip Lorenz ◽  
Christoph Matulla

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