Comparative Assessment of Various Machine Learning-Based Bias Correction Methods for Numerical Weather Prediction Model Forecasts of Extreme Air Temperatures in Urban Areas

Abstract

Forecasts of maximum and minimum air temperatures are essential to mitigate the damage of extreme weather events such as heat waves and tropical nights. The Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model has been widely used for forecasting air temperature, but generally it has a systematic bias due to its coarse grid resolution and lack of parametrizations. This study used random forest (RF), support vector regression (SVR), artificial neural network (ANN) and a multi-model ensemble (MME) to correct the Local Data Assimilation and Prediction System (LDAPS; a local NWP model over Korea) model outputs of next-day maximum and minimum air temperatures ( Tmaxt+1 and Tmint+1) in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 14 LDAPS model forecast data, the daily maximum and minimum air temperatures of in-situ observations, and five auxiliary data were used as input variables. The results showed that the LDAPS model had an R-2 of 0.69, a bias of -0.85 degrees C and an RMSE of 2.08 degrees C for Tmaxt+1 forecast, whereas the proposed models resulted in the improvement with R-2 from 0.75 to 0.78, bias from -0.16 to -0.07 degrees C and RMSE from 1.55 to 1.66 degrees C by hindcast validation. For forecasting Tmint+1, the LDAPS model had an R-2 of 0.77, a bias of 0.51 degrees C and an RMSE of 1.43 degrees C by hindcast, while the bias correction models showed R-2 values ranging from 0.86 to 0.87, biases from -0.03 to 0.03 degrees C, and RMSEs from 0.98 to 1.02 degrees C. The MME model had better generalization performance than the three single machine learning models by hindcast validation and leave-one-station-out cross-validation.