Stochastic modelling and forecasting of relative humidity and wind speed for different zones of Kerala

Abstract

The variations in climatic conditions depend on seasonal changes throughout the year. Modelling and prediction of climatic conditions can help to determine the impacts of seasonal changes in climate over a specific period of time. Climate change can directly and indirectly affect agricultural, industrial, geographical and technological sectors in our society. Agriculture and the allied sector are seriously affected by changes in climate since it leads to complete destruction of cultivated crops. In this study, in order to model and forecast relative humidity and wind speed for northern, central and southern zones of Kerala, stochastic approach using SARIMA (Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) model was employed. The monthly weather data for the northern zone and the central zone of Kerala was taken from the location of RARS Pilicode and RARS Pattambi for a period of 39 years (1982-2020) whereas for southern zone, data was collected from the location of RARS, Vellayani for a period of 36 years (1985-2020) with the help of data access viewer. The model validation was done using MSE (mean square error), RMSE (root mean square error), MAE (mean absolute error) and RMAPE (relative mean absolute percentage error). The RMAPE values of relative humidity and wind speed in different zones of Kerala was less than 10 per cent which indicated that fitted model is showing accurate performance. The best selected SARIMA model is used in attaining anticipated values of relative humidity and wind speed for the next 5 years.