Application of convolutional autoencoder for spatiotemporal bias-correction of radar precipitation

Abstract

As the frequency of localized heavy rainfall has increased during recent years, the importance of high-resolution radar data has also increased. This study aims to correct the bias of Dual Polarization radar that still has a spatial and temporal bias. In many studies, various statistical techniques have been attempted to correct the bias of radar rainfall. In this study, the bias correction of the S-band Dual Polarization radar used in flood forecasting of ME was implemented by a Convolutional Autoencoder (CAE) algorithm, which is a type of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The CAE model was trained based on radar data sets that have a 10-min temporal resolution for the July 2017 flood event in Cheongju. The results showed that the newly developed CAE model provided improved simulation results in time and space by reducing the bias of raw radar rainfall. Therefore, the CAE model, which learns the spatial relationship between each adjacent grid, can be used for real-time updates of grid-based climate data generated by radar and satellites.