A Neural Network for Tornado

Prediction Based on Doppler

Radar-Derived Attributes
AUTHORS: Caren Marzban and Gregory J. Stumpf
Presentation By: Balaji Kartikeyan Chandrasekaran

APPLICATION
To train a neural network to determine whether a circulation will produce a tornado within
next 20 minutes based on inputs from Doppler RADAR (NWSS Weather Surveillance Radar1988 Doppler System.

OLD PROCEDURE
MDA that resides in the RADAR was operationally used as an
guidance to meteorologists to warn the general public
Detection involved setting thresholds for dimension (Depth and
height of base above ground) and strength (such as rotational
velocity).
The NSSL updated the MDA by relaxing the thresholds for above rules
and adding the time associations thus enabling to detect additional
circulations and their types other than tornadoes.

WHY NEURAL NETWORKS

Extremely robust in regards to a priori distribution of data.
No assumptions are made regarding to underlying relations.
Works well for non linearities for which a solvable model cannot be developed.

NETWORK CHARACTERISTICS
Activation function: Logistic function (Fermi Function or Sigmoid)
Number of Inputs: 23 Variables (outputs of both MDA and WSR-88D)
Simulated Annealing used to avoid getting stuck in local minima
Learning algorithm is conjugate gradient method
Two Output Nodes: (0,1)-Tornadic

NETWORK PERFORMANCE
Determines the number of hidden layers for highest
predictive power.
Gauged in terms of Critical Success Index of the
validation set

TRAINING AND VALIDATION SETS

A total of 3258 circulations detected by MDA was considered.
Tornadic-235, Non-Tornadic-3023 with a ratio of 0.078
Tornadic set was divided into 155 in training set and 80 in
validation set
1033 non-tornadic data was taken in validation set (ratio of
0.077)
The number of non-tornadic cases in training set was varied from
100 to 1990 with a step of 200 to find the optimal Hidden
neuron number and the optimal number of 0s in training set.
The same procedure was repeated 10 times per seed and the CSI
was averaged.

RESULTS
The NN outperformed DA and MDA which were chosen for comparing
the NN performance with existing systems.
The number of Hidden neurons and optimal number of non-tornadic
inputs were chosen by comparing and then plotting the performance
of the NN with varying number of zeroes (Non-tornadic inputs)

RESULTS
The trained neural network was exposed to 49 different
circulation pattern which was observed in one single
complete circulation (from formation to demise at an
interval of 5 minutes-Total time is 245 minutes)
The 49 circulations were categorized into three
categories of No tornado detected, Tornado
detected and Tornado predicted.
NN was able to correctly categorise 38 of the 49 inputs.

THANK YOU