Neural network-based wind vector retrieval from satellite scatterometer data

Dan Cornford, Ian T. Nabney, Christopher M. Bishop

Research output: Preprint or Working paperTechnical report

Abstract

Obtaining wind vectors over the ocean is important for weather forecasting and ocean modelling. Several satellite systems used operationally by meteorological agencies utilise scatterometers to infer wind vectors over the oceans. In this paper we present the results of using novel neural network based techniques to estimate wind vectors from such data. The problem is partitioned into estimating wind speed and wind direction. Wind speed is modelled using a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and a sum of squares error function. Wind direction is a periodic variable and a multi-valued function for a given set of inputs; a conventional MLP fails at this task, and so we model the full periodic probability density of direction conditioned on the satellite derived inputs using a Mixture Density Network (MDN) with periodic kernel functions. A committee of the resulting MDNs is shown to improve the results.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationBirmingham
PublisherAston University
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)NCRG99/003
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jan 1999

Keywords

  • conditional probability density estimation
  • mixture density network
  • multi-layer perceptron
  • periodic variables
  • scatterometer
  • wind vectors

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