AbstractWe focus on the nonhomogeneous backward heat problem of finding the initial temperature {\theta=\theta(x,y)=u(x,y,0)} such that\left\{\begin{aligned} \displaystyle u_{t}-a(t)(u_{xx}+u_{yy})&\displaystyle=f%
(x,y,t),&\hskip 10.0pt(x,y,t)&\displaystyle\in\Omega\times(0,T),\\
\displaystyle u(x,y,t)&\displaystyle=0,&\hskip 10.0pt(x,y)&\displaystyle\in%
\partial\Omega\times(0,T),\\
\displaystyle u(x,y,T)&\displaystyle=h(x,y),&\hskip 10.0pt(x,y)&\displaystyle%
\in\overline{\Omega},\end{aligned}\right.\vspace*{-0.5mm}where {\Omega=(0,\pi)\times(0,\pi)}. In the problem, the source {f=f(x,y,t)} and the final data {h=h(x,y)} are determined through random noise data {g_{ij}(t)} and {d_{ij}} satisfying the regression models\displaystyle g_{ij}(t)=f(X_{i},Y_{j},t)+\vartheta\xi_{ij}(t),\displaystyle d_{ij}=h(X_{i},Y_{j})+\sigma_{ij}\varepsilon_{ij},where {(X_{i},Y_{j})} are grid points of Ω. The problem is severely ill-posed.
To regularize the instable solution of the problem, we use the trigonometric least squares method in nonparametric regression associated with the projection method. In addition, convergence rate is also investigated numerically.