Prediction of Precipitation Based on Recurrent Neural Networks in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China

Precipitation is a critical input for hydrologic simulation and prediction, and is widely used for agriculture, water resources management, and prediction of flood and drought, among other activities. Traditional precipitation prediction researches often established one or more probability models of historical data based on the statistical prediction methods and machine learning techniques. However, few studies have been attempted deep learning methods such as the state-of-the-art for Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) networks in meteorological sequence time series predictions. We deployed Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network models for predicting the precipitation based on meteorological data from 2008 to 2018 in Jingdezhen City. After identifying the correlation between meteorological variables and the precipitation, nine significant input variables were selected to construct the LSTM model. Then, the selected meteorological variables were refined by the relative importance of input variables to reconstruct the LSTM model. Finally, the LSTM model with final selected input variables is used to predict the precipitation and the performance is compared with other classical statistical algorithms and the machine learning algorithms. The experimental results show that the LSTM is suitable for precipitation prediction. The RNN models, combined with meteorological variables, could predict the precipitation accurately in Jingdezhen City and provide sufficient time to prepare strategies against potential related disasters.