Convcast: An embedded convolutional LSTM based architecture for precipitation nowcasting using satellite data

Ashutosh Kumar, Tanvir Islam, Yoshihide Sekimoto, Chris A. Mattmann, Brian D. Wilson

PLoS ONE · 11 March 2020 · NASA, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

In one sentence. Convcast, a convolutional LSTM trained on NASA IMERG satellite precipitation, nowcasts up to 150 minutes with 0.805 mm/h RMSE at 30 minutes, outperforming optical flow.

Abstract

Nowcasting of precipitation is a difficult spatiotemporal task because of the non-uniform characterization of meteorological structures over time. Recently, convolutional LSTM has been shown to be successful in solving various complex spatiotemporal based problems. In this research, we propose a novel precipitation nowcasting architecture 'Convcast' to predict various short-term precipitation events using satellite data. We train Convcast with ten consecutive NASA's IMERG precipitation data sets each at intervals of 30 minutes. We use the trained neural network model to predict the eleventh precipitation data of the corresponding ten precipitation sequence. Subsequently, the predicted precipitation data are used iteratively for precipitation nowcasting of up to 150 minutes lead time. Convcast achieves an overall accuracy of 0.93 with an RMSE of 0.805 mm/h for 30 minutes lead time, and an overall accuracy of 0.87 with an RMSE of 1.389 mm/h for 150 minutes lead time. Experiments on the test dataset demonstrate that Convcast consistently outperforms other state-of-the-art optical flow based nowcasting algorithms. Results from this research can be used for nowcasting of weather events from satellite data as well as for future on-board processing of precipitation data.

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