scholarly journals Improving gridded snow water equivalent products in British Columbia, Canada: multi-source data fusion by neural network models

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Snauffer ◽  
William Hsieh ◽  
Alex Cannon ◽  
Markus Schnorbus

Abstract. Estimates of surface snow water equivalent (SWE) in alpine regions with seasonal melts are particularly difficult in areas of high vegetation density, topographic relief and snow accumulations. These three confounding factors dominate much of the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. An artificial neural network (ANN) was created using as predictors six gridded SWE products previously evaluated for BC: ERA-Interim/Land, GLDAS-2, MERRA, MERRA-Land, GlobSnow and ERA-Interim. Relevant spatiotemporal covariates including survey date, year, latitude, longitude, elevation and grid cell elevation differences were also included as predictors, and observations from manual snow surveys at stations located throughout BC were used as target data. Mean absolute errors (MAEs) and correlations for April surveys were found using cross validation. The ANN using the three best performing SWE products (ANN3) had the lowest mean station MAE across the entire province, improving on the performance of individual products by an average of 53 %. Mean station MAEs and April survey correlations were also found for each of BC’s five physiographic regions. ANN3 outperformed each product as well as product means and multiple linear regression (MLR) models in all regions except for the BC Plains, which has relatively few stations and much lower accumulations than other regions. Subsequent comparisons of the ANN results with predictions generated by the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model found ANN3 to be superior over the entire VIC domain and within most physiographic regions. The superior performance of the ANN over individual products, product means, MLR and VIC was found to be statistically significant across the province.

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 891-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Snauffer ◽  
William W. Hsieh ◽  
Alex J. Cannon ◽  
Markus A. Schnorbus

Abstract. Estimates of surface snow water equivalent (SWE) in mixed alpine environments with seasonal melts are particularly difficult in areas of high vegetation density, topographic relief, and snow accumulations. These three confounding factors dominate much of the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. An artificial neural network (ANN) was created using as predictors six gridded SWE products previously evaluated for BC. Relevant spatiotemporal covariates were also included as predictors, and observations from manual snow surveys at stations located throughout BC were used as target data. Mean absolute errors (MAEs) and interannual correlations for April surveys were found using cross-validation. The ANN using the three best-performing SWE products (ANN3) had the lowest mean station MAE across the province. ANN3 outperformed each product as well as product means and multiple linear regression (MLR) models in all of BC's five physiographic regions except for the BC Plains. Subsequent comparisons with predictions generated by the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model found ANN3 to better estimate SWE over the VIC domain and within most regions. The superior performance of ANN3 over the individual products, product means, MLR, and VIC was found to be statistically significant across the province.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 4113-4130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Najafi ◽  
Francis Zwiers ◽  
Nathan Gillett

Abstract A detection and attribution analysis on the multidecadal trend in snow water equivalent (SWE) has been conducted in four river basins located in British Columbia (BC). Monthly output from a suite of 10 general circulation models (GCMs) that participated in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) is used, including 40 climate simulations with anthropogenic and natural forcing combined (ALL), 40 simulations with natural forcing alone (NAT), and approximately 4200 yr of preindustrial control simulations (CTL). This output was downscaled to ° spatial resolution and daily temporal resolution to drive the Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model (VIC). Observed (manual snow survey) and VIC-reconstructed SWE, which exhibit declines across BC, are projected onto the multimodel ensemble means of the VIC-simulated SWE based on the responses to different forcings using an optimal fingerprinting approach. Results of the detection and attribution analysis shows that these declines are attributable to the anthropogenic forcing, which is dominated by the effect of increases in greenhouse gas concentration, and that they are not caused by natural forcing due to volcanic activity and solar variability combined. Anthropogenic influence is detected in three of the four basins (Fraser, Columbia, and Campbell Rivers) based on the VIC-reconstructed SWE, and in all basins based on the manual snow survey records. The simulations underestimate the observed snowpack trends in the Columbia River basin, which has the highest mean elevation. Attribution is supported by the detection of human influence on the cold-season temperatures that drive the snowpack reductions. These results are robust to the use of different observed datasets and to the treatment of low-frequency variability effects.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 2781-2796 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Shukla ◽  
J. Sheffield ◽  
E. F. Wood ◽  
D. P. Lettenmaier

Abstract. Global seasonal hydrologic prediction is crucial to mitigating the impacts of droughts and floods, especially in the developing world. Hydrologic predictability at seasonal lead times (i.e., 1–6 months) comes from knowledge of initial hydrologic conditions (IHCs) and seasonal climate forecast skill (FS). In this study we quantify the contributions of two primary components of IHCs – soil moisture and snow water content – and FS (of precipitation and temperature) to seasonal hydrologic predictability globally on a relative basis throughout the year. We do so by conducting two model-based experiments using the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) macroscale hydrology model, one based on ensemble streamflow prediction (ESP) and another based on Reverse-ESP (Rev-ESP), both for a 47 yr re-forecast period (1961–2007). We compare cumulative runoff (CR), soil moisture (SM) and snow water equivalent (SWE) forecasts from each experiment with a VIC model-based reference data set (generated using observed atmospheric forcings) and estimate the ratio of root mean square error (RMSE) of both experiments for each forecast initialization date and lead time, to determine the relative contribution of IHCs and FS to the seasonal hydrologic predictability. We find that in general, the contributions of IHCs to seasonal hydrologic predictability is highest in the arid and snow-dominated climate (high latitude) regions of the Northern Hemisphere during forecast periods starting on 1 January and 1 October. In mid-latitude regions, such as the Western US, the influence of IHCs is greatest during the forecast period starting on 1 April. In the arid and warm temperate dry winter regions of the Southern Hemisphere, the IHCs dominate during forecast periods starting on 1 April and 1 July. In equatorial humid and monsoonal climate regions, the contribution of FS is generally higher than IHCs through most of the year. Based on our findings, we argue that despite the limited FS (mainly for precipitation) better estimates of the IHCs could lead to improvement in the current level of seasonal hydrologic forecast skill over many regions of the globe at least during some parts of the year.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M. Bergeron ◽  
Mélanie Trudel ◽  
Robert Leconte

Abstract. The potential of data assimilation for hydrologic predictions has been demonstrated in many research studies. Watersheds over which multiple observation types are available can potentially further benefit from data assimilation by having multiple updated states from which hydrologic predictions can be generated. However, the magnitude and time span of the impact of the assimilation of an observation varies according not only to its type, but also to the variables included in the state vector. This study examines the impact of multivariate synthetic data assimilation using the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) into the spatially distributed hydrologic model CEQUEAU for the mountainous Nechako River located in British-Columbia, Canada. Synthetic data includes daily snow cover area (SCA), daily measurements of snow water equivalent (SWE) at three different locations and daily streamflow data at the watershed outlet. Results show a large variability of the continuous rank probability skill score over a wide range of prediction horizons (days to weeks) depending on the state vector configuration and the type of observations assimilated. Overall, the variables most closely linearly linked to the observations are the ones worth considering adding to the state vector. The performance of the assimilation of basin-wide SCA, which does not have a decent proxy among potential state variables, does not surpass the open loop for any of the simulated variables. However, the assimilation of streamflow offers major improvements steadily throughout the year, but mainly over the short-term (up to 5 days) forecast horizons, while the impact of the assimilation of SWE gains more importance during the snowmelt period over the mid-term (up to 50 days) forecast horizon compared with open loop. The combined assimilation of streamflow and SWE performs better than its individual counterparts, offering improvements over all forecast horizons considered and throughout the whole year, including the critical period of snowmelt. This highlights the potential benefit of using multivariate data assimilation for streamflow predictions in snow-dominated regions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Ayub ◽  
SanLinn Kaka

Abstract Manual first-break picking from a large volume of seismic data is extremely tedious and costly. Deployment of machine learning models makes the process fast and cost effective. However, these machine learning models require high representative and effective features for accurate automatic picking. Therefore, First- Break (FB) picking classification model that uses effective minimum number of features and promises performance efficiency is proposed. The variants of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) such as Long ShortTerm Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) can retain contextual information from long previous time steps. We deploy this advantage for FB picking as seismic traces are amplitude values of vibration along the time-axis. We use behavioral fluctuation of amplitude as input features for LSTM and GRU. The models are trained on noisy data and tested for generalization on original traces not seen during the training and validation process. In order to analyze the real-time suitability, the performance is benchmarked using accuracy, F1-measure and three other established metrics. We have trained two RNN models and two deep Neural Network models for FB classification using only amplitude values as features. Both LSTM and GRU have the accuracy and F1-measure with a score of 94.20%. With the same features, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has an accuracy of 93.58% and F1-score of 93.63%. Again, Deep Neural Network (DNN) model has scores of 92.83% and 92.59% as accuracy and F1-measure, respectively. From the pexperiment results, we see significant superior performance of LSTM and GRU to CNN and DNN when used the same features. For robustness of LSTM and GRU models, the performance is compared with DNN model that is trained using nine features derived from seismic traces and observed that the performance superiority of RNN models. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that RNN models (LSTM and GRU) are capable of classifying the FB events efficiently even by using a minimum number of features that are not computationally expensive. The novelty of our work is the capability of automatic FB classification with the RNN models that incorporate contextual behavioral information without the need for sophisticated feature extraction or engineering techniques that in turn can help in reducing the cost and fostering classification model robust and faster.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Akey Sungheetha ◽  
Dr. Rajesh Sharma R

In the field of image processing, all types of computation models are almost evolved to solve the issues through encoded neurons. However, compared with decoding orientation and regression analysis, still the doors are open due to its complexity. At present technologies uses two steps such as, decoding the intermediate terms and reconstruction using decoded information. The performance in terms of regression analysis is lagging due to the decoded intermediate terms. Conventional neural network models perform better in feature classification and representation, though the performance is reduced while handling high level features. Considering these issues in image classification and regression, the proposed model is designed with capsule network as an innovative method which is suitable to handle high level features. The experimental results of the proposed model are compared with conventional neural network models such as BPNN and CNN to validate the superior performance. The proposed model achieves better retrieval efficiency of 95.4% which is much better than other neural network models.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document