Variable selection for tropical cyclogenesis predictive modeling

Abstract

Variable selection for short-term forecasting (up to 72 h) of tropical cyclone (TC) genesis has been investigated. IBTrACS data (1979-2014) are used to identify the genesis time and position of over 2500 TCs between 30°N and 30°S. Tracks are extended using a tropical cloud cluster (TCC) dataset, which is also used to identify over 28 000 nondeveloping TCCs. Subsequently, corresponding local environment states at various atmospheric pressure levels are retrieved from ERA-Interim data. An initial selection of potentially favorable variables for TC genesis is made based on mutual information, which forms the set of nodes for graphical model structure learning using the Peter-Clark (PC) algorith..