Machine learning emulation of urban land surface processes
File(s)Meyer2022_author.pdf (3.02 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Meyer, David
Grimmond, Sue
Dueben, Peter
Hogan, Robin
van Reeuwijk, Maarten
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Can we improve the modeling of urban land surface processes with machine learning (ML)? A prior comparison of urban land surface models (ULSMs) found that no single model is “best” at predicting all common surface fluxes. Here, we develop an urban neural network (UNN) trained on the mean predicted fluxes from 22 ULSMs at one site. The UNN emulates the mean output of ULSMs accurately. When compared to a reference ULSM (Town Energy Balance; TEB), the UNN has greater accuracy relative to flux observations, less computational cost, and requires fewer input parameters. When coupled to the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model using TensorFlow bindings, WRF-UNN is stable and more accurate than the reference WRF-TEB. Although the application is currently constrained by the training data (1 site), we show a novel approach to improve the modeling of surface fluxes by combining the strengths of several ULSMs into one using ML.
Date Issued
2022-03-01
Date Acceptance
2022-02-07
Citation
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 2022, 14 (3)
ISSN
1942-2466
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
Volume
14
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000776466100022&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
machine learning
neural network
Weather Research Forecasting (WRF)
numerical weather prediction (NWP)
coupling
urban land surface
ENERGY-BALANCE MODEL
GLOBAL CLIMATE MODEL
CANOPY MODEL
TEB SCHEME
PART II
PARAMETERIZATION
BUDGET
LAYER
RADIATION
EXCHANGE
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN e2021MS002744