Radar Echo Reconstruction in Oceanic Area via Deep Learning of Satellite Data

A conventional way to monitor severe convective weather is using the composite reflectivity of radar as an indicator. For oceanic areas without radar deployment, reconstruction from satellite data is useful. However, those reconstruction models built on a land dataset are not directly applicable to the ocean due to different underlying surfaces. In this study, we built reconstruction models based on U-Net (named STR-UNet) for different underlying surfaces (land, coast, offshore, and sea), and evaluated their applicability to the ocean. Our results suggest that the comprehensive use of land, coast, and offshore datasets should be more suitable for reconstruction in the ocean than using the sea dataset. The comprehensive performances (in terms of RMSE, MAE, POD, CSI, FAR, and BIAS) of the Land-Model, Coast-Model, and Offshore-Model in the ocean are superior to those of the Sea-Model, e.g., with RMSE being 5.61, 6.08, 5.06, and 7.73 in the oceanic area (Region B), respectively. We then analyzed the importance of different types of features on different underlying surfaces for reconstruction by using interpretability methods combined with physical meaning. Overall, satellite cloud-related features are most important, followed by satellite water-related features and satellite temperature-related features. For the transition of the model from land to coast, then offshore, the importance of satellite water-related features gradually increases, while the importance of satellite cloud-related features and satellite temperature-related features gradually decreases. It is worth mentioning that in the offshore region, the importance of satellite water-related features slightly exceeds the importance of satellite cloud-related features. Finally, based on the performance of the case, the results show that the STR-UNet reconstruction models we established can accurately reconstruct the shape, location, intensity, and range of the convective center, achieving the goal of detecting severe convective weather where a radar is not present.

Automated summary

A conventional way to monitor severe convective weather is using radar, but it is not applicable to oceanic areas without radar deployment. This study built reconstruction models based on U-Net for different underlying surfaces and found that the comprehensive use of land, coast, and offshore datasets is more suitable for oceanic reconstruction. Satellite cloud-related features are most important for reconstruction, followed by satellite water-related features and satellite temperature-related features. The STR-UNet models accurately reconstructed the convective center in terms of shape, location, intensity, and range, achieving the goal of detecting severe convective weather where radar is not present.