Attention-ConvNet Network for Ocean-Front Prediction via Remote Sensing SST Images

Abstract

Ocean front is one typical geophysical phenomenon acting as oases in the ocean for fishes and marine mammals. Accurate ocean-front prediction is critical for fishery and navigation safety. However, the formation and evolution of ocean fronts are inherently nonlinear and are influenced by various factors such as ocean currents, wind fields, and temperature changes, making ocean-front prediction a considerable challenge. This study proposes a temporal-sensitive network named Attention-ConvNet to address this challenge. Ocean fronts exhibit significant multiscale characteristics, requiring analysis and prediction across various temporal and spatial scales. The proposed network designs a hierarchical attention mechanism (HAM) that efficiently prioritizes relevant spatial and temporal information to meet the specific requirement. What is more, the proposed network uses a complex hierarchical branching convolutional network (HBCNet) architecture, which allows our network to leverage the complementary strengths of spatial and temporal information, effectively capturing the dynamic and complex variations in ocean fronts. In general, the network prioritizes and focuses on the most relevant information of front dynamics, which ensures its ability to effectively predict the ocean front. External experiments demonstrate that our network significantly outperforms conventional methods, confirming its capability for precise ocean-front prediction. The codes will be publicly available at https://github.com/yuhudeyue/Ocean-Front-Prediction-Model .