Convolutional Neural Networks Applied on Weather Radar Echo Extrapolation

Extrapolation technique of weather radar echo possesses a widely application prospects in short-term nowcast. The traditional methods of radar echo extrapolation are difficult to obtain long limitation period and lacking in utilization rate of radar data. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a method of weather radar echo extrapolation based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In order to adapt the strong correlation between weather radar echo images of contiguous time, on the basis of traditional convolutional neural networks, this method present a new CNNs model, namely, Recurrent Dynamic Convolutional Neural Networks (RDCNN). RDCNN consists of recurrent dynamic sub-network and probability prediction layer, and constructs a cyclic structure in the convolution layer, which improve the ability of RDCNN to process time-related images. In the experiments of radar data from Nanjing, Hangzhuo and Xiamen, compared with traditional methods, this method has achieved higher accurate of extrapolation and extended the limitation period effectively, which meets the requirement for application.