Identification

Title

LSTM-based data integration to improve Snow Water Equivalent prediction and diagnose error sources

Abstract

Accurate prediction of snow water equivalent (SWE) can be valuable for water resource managers. Re-cently, deep learning methods such as long short-term memory (LSTM) have exhibited high accuracy in simulating hydro-logic variables and can integrate lagged observations to improve prediction, but their benefits were not clear for SWE simulations. Here we tested an LSTM network with data integration (DI) for SWE in the western United States to inte-grate 30-day-lagged or 7-day-lagged observations of either SWE or satellite-observed snow cover fraction (SCF) to im-prove future predictions. SCF proved beneficial only for shallow-snow sites during snowmelt, while lagged SWE integration significantly improved prediction accuracy for both shallow-and deep-snow sites. The median Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient (NSE) in temporal testing improved from 0.92 to 0.97 with 30-day-lagged SWE integration, and root-mean-square error (RMSE) and the difference between estimated and observed peak SWE values dmax were re-duced by 41% and 57%, respectively. DI effectively mitigated accumulated model and forcing errors that would otherwise be persistent. Moreover, by applying DI to different observations (30-day-lagged, 7-day-lagged), we revealed the spatial distribution of errors with different persistent lengths. For example, integrating 30-day-lagged SWE was ineffective for ephemeral snow sites in the southwestern United States, but significantly reduced monthly-scale biases for regions with sta-ble seasonal snowpack such as high-elevation sites in California. These biases are likely attributable to large interannual variability in snowfall or site-specific snow redistribution patterns that can accumulate to impactful levels over time for nonephemeral sites. These results set up benchmark levels and provide guidance for future model improvement strategies.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d73x8bt9

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact