Tropical Cyclone Intensity Classification and Estimation Using Infrared Satellite Images With Deep Learning

Changjiang Zhang, Xiaojie Wang, Leiming Ma, Xiaoqin Lu

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing · 01 January 2021 · China Meteorological Administration (CMA)

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In one sentence. A cascaded CNN classifies and estimates northwest Pacific tropical cyclone intensity from infrared satellite images, reaching 8.60 kt RMSE against best-track data.

Abstract

A novel tropical cyclone (TC) intensity classification and estimation model (TCICENet) is proposed using infrared geostationary satellite images from the northwest Pacific Ocean basin in combination with a cascading deep convolutional neural network (CNN). The proposed model consists of two CNN network modules: a TC intensity classification (TCIC) module and a TC intensity estimation (TCIE) module. First, the TCIC module is utilized to divide TC intensity into three categories using infrared satellite images. Next, three TCIE models based on the CNN regression network that combine different intensity types of infrared satellite images with the TC best track data are presented. The three TCIE models consider classification error with the TCIC module in order to improve TCIE accuracy. A total of 1001 TCs from 1981-2019 were used to verify the proposed TCICENet model, with 844 TCs from 1981-2013 employed as training samples, 76 TCs from 2014-2016 used as validation samples, and 81 TCs from 2017-2019 used as testing samples. In order to reduce the computation burden of training the TCICENet model, various input image sizes were explored. An image size of 170 × 170 pixels achieved the best performance, with an overall root mean square error of 8.60 kt and a mean absolute error of 6.67 kt compared to the best track.

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