Integrating Weather Station Data and Radar for Precipitation Nowcasting: SmaAt-fUsion and SmaAt-Krige-GNet

TL;DR

This paper introduces two novel deep learning architectures that integrate weather station data with radar imagery to improve short-term precipitation nowcasting, especially in low precipitation scenarios.

Contribution

It presents SmaAt-fUsion and SmaAt-Krige-GNet models that effectively combine multi-variable weather data with radar images, enhancing nowcasting accuracy over existing methods.

Findings

SmaAt-Krige-GNet outperforms SmaAt-UNet in low precipitation scenarios.

SmaAt-fUsion improves nowcasting in both low and high precipitation conditions.

Incorporating weather station data significantly enhances deep learning-based precipitation forecasts.

Abstract

Short-term precipitation nowcasting is essential for flood management, transportation, energy system operations, and emergency response. However, many existing models fail to fully exploit the extensive atmospheric information available, relying primarily on precipitation data alone. This study examines whether integrating multi variable weather-station measurements with radar can enhance nowcasting skill and introduces two complementary architectures that integrate multi variable station data with radar images. The SmaAt-fUsion model extends the SmaAt-UNet framework by incorporating weather station data through a convolutional layer, integrating it into the bottleneck of the network; The SmaAt-Krige-GNet model combines precipitation maps with weather station data processed using Kriging, a geo-statistical interpolation method, to generate variable-specific maps. These maps are then utilized in a dual-encoder architecture based on SmaAt-GNet, allowing multi-level data integration. Experimental evaluations were conducted using four years (2016--2019) of weather station and precipitation radar data from the Netherlands. Results demonstrate that SmaAt-Krige-GNet outperforms the standard SmaAt-UNet, which relies solely on precipitation radar data, in low precipitation scenarios, while SmaAt-fUsion surpasses SmaAt-UNet in both low and high precipitation scenarios. This highlights the potential of incorporating discrete weather station data to enhance the performance of deep learning-based weather nowcasting models.